Contemporary foreign-language education focuses on the development of multicultural language personality of the university graduate, who has necessary competencies to implement in professional activities. One of such competences is professionally-oriented foreign language communicative competence that is responsible for the capability of a future specialist to take active part in professionally-oriented intercultural oral and written communication. The article is aimed to determine the purpose of speech competence as a component of professionally-oriented foreign language communicative competence in the implementation of written foreign-language communication through written discourse, and to identify the characteristics of the latter for teaching to make up diverse types of written discourse included in the curriculum of a non-linguistic university. Leading approaches to study this problem are competence-focused, professionally-oriented, person-centered and communicative and cognitive approaches, considering professionally-oriented foreign language speech competence a complex system with written speech activity as one of its components, that serves communication through various types of written discourse. The article presents the composition of professionally-oriented foreign language speech competence and describes typological features of written discourse as a product of a completed level of this competence. The article describes manifestation of these features in the abstract at the strategic, tactical, genre-related and linguo-rhetorical levels, and the results of experimental work on teaching to make up abstract as a type of discourse that identifies its contribution to the formation of professionally-oriented foreign language speech competence. The materials of the article are of practical value for those who study professionally-oriented foreign language speech competence and written discourse as a product of a completed level of this competence, as well as for those who teach students to make up diverse types of foreign language written discourse.