The article is devoted to foreign language text selection for teaching professionallyoriented reading of the initial stage of a non-linguistic higher school. We studied the work on selection of basic and complementary texts in accordance with the proposed selection criteria in order to optimize the learning process in professionally-focused reading of students of nonlinguistic higher schools at an early stage. Сonsidered are such criteria as text information content, textual genre variability, accessibility, etc. Of particular importance is the presence of illustrative textual material.