The period of social transformations causes changes in the interaction between the environment and an individual. If the person wants to be successful in the modern information and knowledge society and to be able to meet the challenges, he/she must constantly renew his/her competence. In the contemporary society, individual's communication competence becomes an essential part of the general competence due to the following factors: almost all our activities are penetrated with the search for, use, processing, and organizing of information, transforming this into knowledge, which is, in fact, learning. Among the factors are also the use of knowledge and constant creation of new knowledge which enables person's acting in new situations. It becomes evident that individual's communication competence in the information and knowledge society has to acquire new qualities, since the potential of using, creating, and disseminating information and knowledge unfolds only when information communication technologies (ICT), which have essentially changed individual's intellectual and communicational capacities, are effectively used. The presentation addresses the following questions: what specific features does the concept of communicative competence distinguish in the development of the informative and multicultural society; what sub-competencies does the concept of contemporary communicative competence incorporate?The first part reveals the factors which determine the shift in the understanding of communication competence under the information and knowledge society formation. The special emphasis is placed on ICT, as they open wide, earlier unseen abilities to transfer, to accept, and to disseminate information, to distribute the torrents of knowledge and ideas despite distance. Using ICT, people can get information quicker, cheaper, become more educated. However, in order for ICT to become effective and to contribute constructively to the progress of an individual, organization, or society, the skills of using modern technologies are necessary. The value of using effective information suggests the usage of effective information technologies, and mastering the latter demands special and, so far, elitist epistolary-cultural competence.The second part of the presentation is devoted to the contemporary concept of communication competence, and to the substantiation of a new communication competence model, determined by changes in the environment. Literature research has enabled to present the following structure of a contemporary communication competence model:· Linguistic sub- competence is a possession of the "inventory" (words, their forms, phrases, graphic, and sound units) of a given language that is necessary for a communicative activity, and it is also the ability to operate with it according to the regularities of that language. There should be the competence of using the grammar, phonetics, and lexical means in the system of these factors of linguistic competence.· Socio-linguistic sub-competence is the ability to use and interpret the forms of a language according to the situation: that situation (who, with whom, about what, where, and with what purpose communicates) decides the selection and use of the forms of a language.· Discourse sub-competence is the ability to understand and form coherent and clear texts (not as accidental combinations of words and sentences, but as a coherent discourse).· Strategic sub- competence is the ability to use expediently non- verbal strategies of a language passing and accepting information in order to achieve a communicative purpose.· Socio-cultural sub- competence is the ability to perceive a socio- cultural context and to construct the discourse which corresponds to the cultural context.· Social sub-competence is the ability to behave properly in different social situations and the ability to understand others.· ICT sub-competence is composed of the ability to control and the ability to use ICT (technological literacy); of possessing informative abilities and their use (informative literacy),of the knowledge of social, ethnic, legitimate norms, and the ability to keep them using ICT in the activity (social literacy).