Introduction. Despite being sufficiently studied in various fields of cognitive activity, the theory of cognitive styles in the field of Russian as a foreign language is not only underdeveloped, but also not widely covered in the scientific literature. Since the fruitfulness of its practical application is unquestionable in methodology, there was a need for a detailed study of the cognitive styles inherent to foreign students of various contingents in the process of learning the Russian language, in order to identify methodological approaches and learning strategies relevant to different audiences. The purpose is to summarize the experience accumulated in this field, to give examples of existing textbooks tailored to students’ cognitive styles, to compare their methodological apparatus with the prospect of creating new teaching materials that take into account the difference in the types of cognitive activity. The material of the article is scientific research in the field of teaching foreign languages, as well as educational materials on Russian as a foreign language created by the authors which are the training package of 17 books “Russian for Foreign students of Engineering profile. Vocabulary. Grammar” (based on the concept of I.B. Avdeyeva), for engineering students, as well as the author's special course of N.V. Krasnokutskaya for European students. The methods include: theoretical – systematic and comparative analysis, analysis of cause-and-effect relationships, analysis of scientific literature, generalization of research results, scientific observation and synthesis of pedagogical experience; empirical – observation, comparison and grouping, testing, survey-didactic and observational methods, methods of expert assessment. The results have shown that the analytical cognitive style is characteristic both for students of technical specialties and for students from European and other countries who speak European languages and studied within the European educational system, since both are characterized by an analytical strategy of cognition, attention to detail, high autonomy, a tendency to ordering, orientation to the consistent assimilation of new information. The similarity of these characteristics allows us to consider these contingents of students as a suitable audience for conducting classes and developing educational materials based on their inherent analytical cognitive style. Examples of such training materials are analyzed and compared in detail in this article. The similarity of their methodological support is revealed, which is reflected in the inductive-deductive cognitive-preferred method of work in the considered manuals, in particular: in the algorithmic sequence of tasks that train strategies for observation, distinction, memorization, assimilation, transformation. It is shown that, despite the external dissimilarity of these contingents of foreign students, within the framework of linguodidactics, they are united by a single methodological framework due to their similar cognitive styles. In conclusion, the paper suggests the feasibility of creating educational materials focused on the cognitive styles of students.