The paper deals with the actual problem of textbooks and teaching aids’ creation while taking into account the social, psychophysical and psycholinguistic features of modern students of language specialties, who, along with practical language courses, receive theoretical training. A new generation of students, often called the generation of "zoomers", as well as the introduction of the online learning based on the educational platforms Zoom and Teams, revealed the urgent need to modernize the learning process, introduce new forms of work, as well as to create textbooks and teaching aids of a new type. The work draws attention to the trainees’ characteristics, which distinguish the current generation from their predecessors, for example, pragmatism, multi-activity, self-confidence, digitalization, and a number of others. Based on the experience of teaching and analyzing the research of Russian linguists, linguo-didacts, and textbook authors, the paper suggests the possibility of creating textbooks and manuals that overcome the students’ shortcomings and use their typical traits to improve the quality of education. The result of the study was the development of criteria for the formation of a textbook on theoretical disciplines. These criteria describe both approaches to the material organization in the textbook and the revision of the educational process organization, in particular, the refusal from the standard model of "teacher-student", which allows the student to become a "co-creator" of a practical or a theoretical lesson. A new type of textbook becomes a multi-modal complex that takes into account not only the modern students’ specifics, but also has technical characteristics that meet the ideas of the latest technologies. The practical significance of the study results is the possibility of creating a pilot project of a textbook on theoretical disciplines for undergraduate students, structured in accordance with the criteria described in this research paper.

distance learning, a new type of a textbook, Z generation