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Educational space of a higher education institution constantly and continuously influences student’s personality as well as his / her developing as a competent specialist. The research was aimed at substantiating pedagogical technologies that optimize the process of forming students’ foreign-language professional competence within the educational space of a higher education institution. Theoretical (analysis, synthesis, comparison, systematization, pedagogical modelling), empirical (observation, pedagogical experiment, peer review method, reflexive evaluation method) and statistical methods were applied to achieve the set goal. Educational space of a higher education institution is defined as a purposefully created, methodically provided continuum of students’ foreign-language professional communication under conditions of which the development of their personality and effective formation of their foreign-language professional competence take place. Foreign-language professional competence as an integrative personality trait, determined by the synthesis of knowledge and skills, professional and life experience, values that ensure long-term readiness and ability to pursue professional activity in a foreign language, is developed effectively if the educational space of a higher education institution is multilingual and multicultural in its nature, broad, rich in foreign-language professional content, open, directed outwards. When designing educational space, it is necessary to rationally combine educational and non-educational components, provide in-class and out-of-class / extracurricular foreign-language educational and cognitive activities of students, use facilities of virtual educational environment, apply technics of contextual teaching, implement imitative and playing activities, interactive forms of training (games, project activity, case-study). In-class educational activity influences such components of foreign-language competence as “knowledge” and “skills”, whereas an extracurricular one aims at forming “values” and “experience”. Keywords: educational space of a higher education institution, foreign-language professional competence, virtual educational environment, educational and non-educational components, imitative and playing activities.