The article deals with the problem of developing educational literature on Mari as the state language. The Federal State Educational Standard for General Education has made changes to the approaches and principles of constructing educational literature in all school subjects, including the Mari language as the state language. This is due to the fact that the methodological basis of the standard is the system-activity approach. The theory and practice of the methodological science development in the Republic of Mari El evidence the scientists and practitioners’ search for the most effective approaches to teaching Mari as the state language. The grammar-translation method, used by teachers in the initial period of introducing the subject into the Basic Curriculum, did not yield any positive results. The Communicative (E. I. Passov), Activity (L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontiev, etc.) and Communicative-Activity (Soboleva E. A., etc.) Approaches help to form students’ motivation to learn the language, develop their cognitive activity and organize their own activities. But the requirements of the Standard lay the main emphasis on the development of educational literature based on the Communicative-Activity Approach. Textbooks, created on the principles of this approach, contribute to the formation of the key students’ competence – “to teach to learn”.