Chapter One Introduction
　　The importance of competence-oriented education has been emphasized in ELT in China. Learners’ competence is being paid more and more attention to. The purpose of this thesis is to bring home to the English teachers the importance of pragmatic competence in communication and call for the attention to the cultivation of students' pragmatic competence in classroom.
　　Chapter Two Theoretical References of the Cultivation of Pragmatic Competence
　　Pragmatics studies the use of language in human communication as determined by the conditions of society, especially the studies in different cultural context to understand how to use the language appropriately, including Speech Act Theory, Cooperative Principle, Indirect Speech Acts etc.
　　Chapter Three Necessity of Cultivating Students' Pragmatic Competence
　　Traditionally, most teachers taught language knowledge out of text, and did not take cultural differences into too much consideration. Listening, speaking, and writing ability of students' in practice can not be meet the needs of society, which reflects our mode of teaching and teaching methods on the problem.
　　Chapter Four Suggested Strategies for the Cultivation of Pragmatic Competence
　　Nowadays, ELT in China has taken on a new look. In a certain sense, "Learning a language is a process of cultivating pragmatic competence of the target language" (He Ziran, 1997:199). Therefore, several ways of cultivating pragmatic competence will be proposed in this thesis.
　　4.1 To cultivate students' context consciousness
　　At the beginning of studying English, the teacher should pay more attention to cultivate students' ability to use proper utterance in a certain occasion, and cultivate students' pragmatic competence gradually. The employed examples should conform to the environment. As for arranging school assignment, we can demand student "Finish your homework tomorrow." or use the note talking over to say "Will you finish your homework tomorrow?" Thinking from the relation between the teacher and the student, speech is the more direct, the more appropriate.
　　4.2 To enhance students' cultural consciousness
　　 Culture plays an important role in learning language. English teachers should pay attention to introduce the background knowledge of English culture in order to create a certain cultural atmosphere. Take "Country Music" (Unit 11, Book I (A), Senior English for China) for example. Before studying the text first, teacher could provide students with more information about the American country music, such as the background of country music, the past and present of country music and the theme of country music etc. Also, teacher could play several country music songs, so that students understand the text easily.
　4.3 To cultivate students' pragmatic consciousness in language activity
　　There are various forms of linguistic activities, such as performance, party activities, group activities, discussion, repetition, as well as an extracurricular activity-English corner. The teacher can design diversified forms of activities according to the content of each chapter.
　　The language communication activity in class can not only improve students' listening and speaking ability, but also let students learn various communicative strategies.
　　Conclusion
　　This thesis concludes that there is relationship between pragmatics, context and communication, and it is necessary to cultivate students' competence to use language appropriately. In addition, the cultivation of pragmatic competence must be based on the full consideration of all factors, including situational environment, social and cultural factors.
　　However, this study is open to more research, which is not complete or perfect, so it does not come to a real end. A further research in this field is needed in the future.