The relevance of the study is determined by the necessity to clarify the concept "professional foreign-language thesaurus" in terms of linguodidactics and to provide students majoring in Economics and Law with a methodological framework for its formation. The theoretical background of the research is presented by the linguistic personality approach. According to it, the professional foreign-language thesaurus can be presented in a three-level projection: verbal-semantic, cognitive and

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... al. Cognition being the main characteristic of the thesaurus, the authors emphasize the interrelation of conceptualization and semantization of economic and legal reality in teaching professional English. In authors' point of view, the professional foreign-language thesaurus is not only the system of linguistic knowledge with professional terminology structured specifically but also a driving force that governs the mental activity of a linguistic personality. The authors believe that enrichment of the foreign-language thesaurus contributes to a high level of foreign language communicative competence as well as to the creation of a professional image of a qualified specialist. The main methodological principle of creating professional foreign-language thesaurus is the semantic field principle which makes it possible to trace the functioning of the word in the context of syntagmatic, paradigmatic and associative relations with other words. The authors consider problem-based methods of creating a thesaurus the most efficient tools of arousing the students' cognitive activity and keeping up strong motivation. The article gives the most effective methods and forms of professional foreign language thesaurus build up, as exemplified by the manual Economic security developed by the authors.