What is communicative competence? What is its nature and impact on the quality of education? Can it be improved in the course of foreign language teaching, as well as measured and evaluated? How to create a technology of language testing, designed to identify communicative competence, which will be methodologically compatible with an automated system of linguistic and didactic measurements? Answering these questions, the author outlines his concept of linguistic and didactic testing and offers a technology of language test design, developed on the principles of competency-based approach. The work is completed with applications: "Structure of Certified Pedagogical Measurement Materials (APTM)" and "Demonstration version of the text-centric test". The monograph is addressed to foreign language teachers working in non-linguistic universities, as well as to a wide range of people who are interested in the problems of linguistics and methods of teaching foreign languages in higher education.