In modern labor market conditions, more and more importance is drawn to the language skills of applicants. For future workers in the tourism and hospitality industries, foreign language communication skills play a particularly important role. This article describes and analyzes the effectiveness of the main methods of teaching a foreign language at a non-linguistic university using the example of teaching English to students of the Russian State University of Tourism and Service (RSUTS). The purpose of this research is to identify the advantages and disadvantages of each method and to determine the most effective method of teaching English. The research methodology includes a content analysis of articles on the topic under research and a generalization of our experience of teaching English at RSUTS. The article contains the analysis of advantages and disadvantages of modern and classical teaching methods: interactive methods, the business game method, the project method, the method of subject-language integrated learning, the grammar-translation method, the method of communicative learning. It is concluded that it is effective to use the combination of all these methods, except for the method of subject-language integrated learning which is not used at RSUTS, in order to evenly develop the students' reading, listening, writing and speaking skills. It is emphasized that the project method is especially productive when teaching English to students studying "Tourism" and "Hospitality business" which is explained by the larger number of practical classes compared to other study areas. It is noted that the quality of practical use of the selected methods depends on the number of classroom hours, the technical equipment of universities, the uniformity of the initial level of knowledge of students and their psychological characteristics.