Abstract: The object of research in this article is the assessment of students at higher school. The matter under study is tge criteria and difficulties of assessing bachelors in non-professional disciplines. Particular author’s attention is paid to specificity of non-professional disciplines as a constituent part of educational bachelor’s programmes and to analysis of assessing students in present practice. Assessment in exact sciences and Humanities and foreign language are analyzed separately. Assessing students is also presented in the context of their motivation for learning and orientation to professional activity. The method of research in the article is the analysis of current practice of assessing students including the author’s own experience. The main author’s conclusions in this article involve the following statements. 1) Peculiarities of assessing students depend on the specificity of a discipline. 2) Even though they do not directly form professional knowledge and skills, non-professional disciplines are still an important constituent part of bachelor’s curriculum in terms of the competence approach. 3) Nowadays school grades do not often reflect their actual knowledge and intellectual level and are a formality. The novelty of this article is in presenting problems of assessment at higher school on the basis of classification of disciplines and through the prism of students’ motivation for studies and their orientation at their future professional activity.

Abstract: The research object of the present article is forming cross-cultural competence and cross-cultural awareness under disappearing ethnical borders in a globalized world. The research subject is the policultural education as a socio-pedagogical phenomenon. It is viewed through the prism of cross-cultural communication issues and is considered a premise of forming cross-cultural competence and awareness. The article views mechanisms of socio-pedagogical influence on personality during forming such qualities. Particular attention is paid to culture perception and the two contrasting mechanisms: ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. The method of research in this article is a complex socio-pedagogical, cultural and socio-linguistic analysis of policultural education. The main author’s conclusions are the following. The issue of forming communicative and cross-cultural competence is far beyond the scope of teaching foreign languages as it is often viewed in researches. These competences imply such personal qualities that cannot be formed only by means of one discipline. The issues raised in the article are equally topical both for communication in foreign and native languages. The novelty of the article is caused by the fact that the author views policultural education as the centre of a complex of cross-cultural issues: social, pedagogical, socio-cultural and socio-linguistic ones.