This article aims to analyse the theoretical foundations of systematizing students’ punctuation skills and updating methodological conditions for optimizing this process. An analytical review of the data of modern linguistics, psycholinguistics, didactics and methodology was conducted, as well as the author’s extensive practical experience was generalized. While studying theoretical sources and practical experience, the necessity of implementing active cognitive activity in training, based on selection and control mechanisms, was recognized. The systematization of students’ punctuation skills is achieved by stimulating students’ intensive cognitive activity using problem-based learning methods under the dominance of the inductive method, which is implemented in the techniques of conversation, language visibility, differentiation, comparison, sentence composition and table analysis. Conclusions are drawn about the importance of systematizing knowledge and skills for the development of students’ cognitive abilities.