Introduction. The article examines the problem of developing students' communicative skills by means of project activities. Communicative skills are a set of actions of a person that allow her to consciously use communicative knowledge to organize communication and joint creative activity. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the expediency of using project activities in the development of students’ communicative skills. Materials and methods. Theoretical analysis of the literature on the research problem, generalization, testing. Research results, discussion. Groups of communicative skills have been studied and analyzed: socio-psychological (the ability to organize communication in teaching activities, stimulate educational motivation and cognitive activity of participants in the educational process, predict the results obtained, formalize a statement in writing, express their thoughts orally without distortion, etc.), communicative and organizational (the ability to plan the process of communication in a group, interpret and control this process, coordinate their actions with the team, listen to the opinions of other participants, consider the needs of fellow communicators), information and communication (skills of polite communication, the ability to navigate partners, correlate means of verbal and non-verbal communication, actively and attentively listen to a partner, follow the rules of communication culture, express your thoughts emotionally and meaningfully using gestures, facial expressions, symbols, listen and delve into the essence of the problem, ask questions), affective and communicative (the ability to share feelings, take care of a partner, assess the emotional state of another). The structure of students' communicative skills is theoretically substantiated, and the possibilities of project activities for their development are determined. The use of project activities in the classroom solves the following tasks: the development of educational motivation and a sense of responsibility for the results of work on the project, the acquisition of new skills in the design of the results of general work, improving the research ability that allows the student to navigate the flow of information, its analysis, the development of speech abilities during the argumentation of their point of view, the protection of the results obtained. Conclusion. The results of this study can be useful for theoretical and practical application to teachers of higher and secondary professional educational institutions engaged in training design specialists, as well as in the creation of advanced training and professional retraining programs and programs of additional professional education.