In the article, for the first time in Eastern European linguodidactics, an original method of using students' emotional intelligence data and their personal linguoculture for a new structuring of didactic material in the study of foreign languages (on the example of Ukrainian as a foreign language) is offered. The authors aimed to make theoretical generalizations and conclusions about the main subject of the research, to determine the types of emotional-intellectual relation of students to a foreign language in the classes of the higher educational institutions and to model the general methodological scheme on the basis of sociological and functional-semantic data. The used methods can be clearly divided into theoretical, sociological and modeling, which made it possible to demonstrate a new approach to the thematic presentation of didactic material on the example of the concept HAPPY and determine the degree of flexibility of students' emotional intelligence in foreign language classes. First of all, the international significance of the article lies in the first attempt of the synthesis of the theory of emotional intelligence and linguoculturology (theory of concepts) in the optimization of the foreign language didactics; secondly, the authors, with the help of associative experiment and functional-field thematic structuring, offered a new model of presenting the lexical material of foreign language teaching for the first time.