The article is devoted to the problem of training a teacher of Philology by means of elective cognitive linguistic courses. On the one hand, the penetration of cognitivism in various fields of humanities, the urgent need to create a new understanding of the role of languages in the processes of cognition and comprehension of the world, the essence and functioning of the mental lexicon, including proper names, and deep relationships between history and culture, on the other hand, not less critical need for specialists ready to work in the new Ukrainian school, able to understand languages in cognitive processes, to implement a socio-cultural approach to language and speech material, determine the relevance of the proposed topic. Except for this, we also considered that nowadays, the students’ training includes the curriculum with at least 25 % of credits for elective courses, which ensures the implementation of a student-centred approach to learning. The article aimed to find out the peculiarities of the training of a teacher-philologist in the study of such elective disciplines of the language cycle as “Cognitive Linguistics”, “Cognitive Onomastics” and “Ukrainian Ethnolinguistics in the Cognitive Dimension”. To achieve this goal, the example of studying individual topics has shown how to optimize the learning process. In particular, short theses on the mentioned topics, control questions, tasks for independent work and literature review are offered. The conclusion is made about the advantages of both lectures and practical training. If during the lectures, students should, first of all, master the terminology and master the theoretical knowledge, then at the workshops, they ought to acquire skills of conceptual analysis, learn to model and structure concepts, understand language as a creative product of ethnosociety, and proper names - as units of the mental lexicon. The observations allowed us to conclude that the study of these disciplines is of great theoretical and practical importance. Theoretical value includes the assimilation of linguistic information to understand the cognitive mechanisms and role of language in them, the processes of ethnogenesis, and the functioning of language units in the mental lexicon; the practical one lies in need to develop students’ skills to use knowledge in future teaching. In general, the study outlined several problems caused by the penetration of cognitivism in language, which require further in-depth analysis, especially in terms of Linguodidactics.