The article focuses on development of intercultural awareness in teaching of professional Russian. The formation of intercultural competence represents one of key elements in professional teaching of specialists. The intercultural competence comprises skills which are vital both for verbal and nonverbal communication with foreign language native speakers, requiring the perception and management of various socially and culturally rooted language phenomena and consideration of cultural peculiarities pertaining to the country of the language being studied. The need to develop such competence poses new challenges to teachers by requiring from them to develop a new perception of learning goals. The respective article dwells on didactic aspects of learners' adaptation to peculiarities of a foreign culture, as well as on teaching of effective communication to achieve professional goals by considering the intercultural factor. Various didactic techniques are therein analysed, namely the linguo-conceptual approach in teaching of a foreign language, formation of discourse frames necessary for professional and everyday communication, exercises with texts containing culturological information. The tailor-made system of exercises is targeted at eliminating possible communication failures inflicted by cultural discrepancies. The purpose is to achieve the level of competence which is sufficient for an adequate and correct implementation of communication goals in analysed situations of everyday and business communication. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.