Modern foreign language lesson is impossible to imagine without integrating into it knowledge about the geography, economy and politics of the country of the studied language, about the features of culture and traditions of its people. The multifaceted tasks faced by teachers in the process of teaching integrated country studies raises a lot of questions both theoretical and practical plan. This article attempts to find answers to the most important of them: What is meant by "country studies"? On what depends the choice and the amount of selected for the teaching of country study material? How to combine effectively in the lesson linguistic phenomena, development of communicative and intercultural competence of students? To this end, the main approaches to teaching country studies are examined and methods for teaching them in a foreign language lesson are identified.