| With the development of science and technology, the communication and cooperation between nations become more and more frequent. Foreign language, as a communication tool, plays an important role in modern society. Language is used to communicate, and pragmatic competence is an important ingredient of communicative competence. In cross-culture communication, language learners commit this or that kind of pragmatic failure. The term"pragmatic failure"is adopted from the article Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure by J. Thomas (1983). She states that pragmatic failure refers to the inability to understand"What is meant by what is said". Pragmatic failure maybe regarded as a fact that a non-English native speaker is being deliberately impolite, unfriendly, or even rude.To find out why the deficiencies in traditional language teaching bring out the weak pragmatic competence of the learners, this research explores the factors influencing pragmatic competence. The conclusion based on the analysis of the causes such as culture differences, ignorance of context, lack of pragmatic knowledge, inappropriateness from the perspective of cross-culture communication and pragmatics is that in order to achieve the successful communication, foreign language learners should not only grasp sound linguistic knowledge of the target language but also have pragmatic competence, which is an indispensable part in foreign language teaching.Implications suggest that the work of a foreign language teacher is to foster students'ability to use the target language correctly and appropriately and set it as a goal of the teaching. Some suggestions for the cultivation of pragmatic competence in foreign language teaching are proposed: providing authentic materials; integrating culture teaching with language teaching; introducing pragmatic knowledge; utilizing task-based approach and emphasizing teachers'professional development and self-improvement.
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