Proposing the distinctions between internal and external linguistics, F. de Saussure could hardly anticipate a fantastic impact, which social, geopolitical and technological progress (an external phenomena) would exert on the linguistic paradigm (an internal entity) change. Anyway, this influence is traceable. The increasingly globalizing world, appearance of trans-national corporations, cooperative events, broadening academic exchanges promote the establishment of the English language in the status of a lingua franca. This motivates and stimulates the desire and necessity to learn English not only in its capacity of commonplace communication practices (EGP) but as professional communication tool (ESP). The goals of mastering these two counterpart acquirements turn out to be different, the methods have to be improved, the tools of teaching to be varied. The conceptual statement of the undertaken research establishes reciprocal dependency relations in dichotomies “paradigm – method” and “goal – tool”. The shift of linguistic paradigm is externally determined. The claim of the article is that alongside all the obvious developments in educational domain there are constituents, which retain their position though they may change their formal attire. One of these constants is the textbook whose functional loads are essential for it supplies thematically and professionally relevant information, brings the teaching materials to order and designates the learning algorithm.

educational paradigm shift, methodology clusters, digital textbooks