The article highlights the problem of students’ foreign language communicative competence formation in the process of reading and speaking skills development. The authors point out that through reading activities students acquire language knowledge and develop speaking skills in both fluency and accuracy. Thus, the goal of the research is to define the effective ways of students’ foreign language communicative competence formation by means of reading and speaking activities within the university English course. The article focuses on the concept of communicative competence and the ways to form it. The authors view this concept as a term referring not only to the language structural features, but also to its contextual, pragmatic and social characteristics. Reading and speaking skills are defined as central aspects for language communicative competence development. The authors consider basic teaching techniques and principles to involve students into foreign language communication. Reading and speaking activities are considered to be a powerful and effective resource to improve students’ communicative skills.