Abstract
This article is devoted to an urgent problem - the importance of developing the students’ brain activity in learning English. The object is the process of teaching a foreign (English) language in the first year of nonlinguistic specialties. The purpose of the work is to identify the reasons for the deterioration of students' cognitive abilities, inability to express their thoughts, prove, convince. The article provides a number of techniques that increase the motivation of students to study a foreign language, developing the mental and cognitive activities of students. The article is written in a simple, understandable language, not overloaded with exhaustion, highly specialized terminology. The authors' conclusions are quite reasonable. The results of the work can be useful for teachers not only of a foreign language, but also of other humanitarian subjects.