The article is devoted to the current state of foreign language education at the present stage of development of foreign language teaching methods. At present, there is a departure from the absolutization of the communicative approach and purely communicative competence as the ultimate goal of education and a change in the philosophy of education: a transition from a knowledge-centric paradigm of education to a culturally consistent one. Particular attention is paid to the difference between communicativeness and communication, which is put forward as the main goal of foreign language education. Teaching a foreign language as a phenomenon of constant communication of a student with another culture in the course of linguistic communication is intercultural in nature. The transition from the knowledge-centric paradigm of education to the culturally appropriate one required a change in the entire education system: the content, methods, units and means of education, which are considered in detail in the article. The thesis is substantiated that only a conscious and theoretically substantiated intercultural orientation of the process of teaching a foreign language can form a personality free from prejudices and stereotypes in relation to a foreign culture.