Modern higher education represents a field which, along with hard (professional) skills, should develop the soft skills of future specialists. Being a teacher at secondary school, a person must demonstrate a high level of cross-cultural awareness, be ready to pass this competence to the younger generation. Many scientists consider the genuine (authentic) text as the most appropriate tool at ESL classes, which can improve vocabulary and help understand the culture and society of a target language. Culturally-marked lexis makes up one of the biggest difficulties for students-philologists, who are required to know language material at an advanced level. When mentioning genuine text in the context of preparing future philologists it moves the limited “reading translation” idea, and shits towards the deep analysis of advertising leaflets, linguistic comparison of postcards from past and present, online blogs, and social posts, etc.