The article discusses the place and role of the discipline "Russian language and culture of speech" in the system of academic disciplines of technical universities. Communicative competence of students of technical universities is not always sufficient for effective communication, including in the professional sphere. Training of highly qualified specialists without thorough training of their speech culture is unproductive. Speech culture is a tool of professional activity of a future specialist. Since in technical universities "Russian language and speech culture" has the status of the only speech discipline, its role is especially important. It should solve complex problems of teaching students not only the norms of modern Russian literary language, but also develop their rhetorical skills and abilities. The ways of solving this problem are seen in the organization of students' independent work; the choice of optimal ways of presenting linguistic material; the organization of control of mastered linguistic knowledge; the performance of creative tasks.
