Abstract
Profound changes in modern society and the development of market relations in it have led to a change in the system of life values of citizens of any country. Changes in value orientations have a sig-nificant impact on the professional self-determination of the new generation, which requires other types of career guidance work with young people that differ from previous forms, taking into account their worldview attitudes, and unstable labor market conditions. The purpose of the research is to determine the spectrum of the main value orientations of students, the role and significance of the labor values of students majoring in «Foreign Languages» at universities in Kazakhstan, Russia and China for successful self-realization in the labor market. The main empirical part of the sociological research is a survey conducted by the method of questioning students studying at full-time departments of the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (Kazakhstan), Saratov State University named after N. G. Chernyshevsky (Russia) and Dalian University of Foreign Languages (China). The total number of respondents is 300 people. The article comprehensively analyzes the value structure that has changed under the influence of external causes, and the views of young people on professional preferences, their attitude to the pro-fession being mastered and its role in the implementation of individual life plans. The factors of socio-professional self-determination of students are revealed. According to the results of the sociological research, for the youth of Kazakhstan and Russia, the importance in future work is an interesting job, and for Chinese students – the opportunity to develop skills in work. It was revealed that graduates who participated in the research of three countries in the specialty “Foreign language” have such common values as: “achieving their interests, goals”, as well as “conscious choice of profession” and “work only in their chosen specialty”. Key words: youth, values, value orientations, foreign language, choice of profession.