What is Pragmatics in an EFL context? How Teachable is it? Darrell Wilkinson and Natalie Close Introduction There has been a growing interest within language teaching in the area of pragmatics for many years, and this has been reflected in the increasing body of academic research, publications and special interest groups devoted to the area. This interest seems to have grown largely from a belief that the mastering of vocabulary and grammar is not enough to enable learners to become competent, naturalistic users of English. Many of the „natural‟ or „native‟ utterances and discourse patterns produced by both native and non-native speakers of English can be seemingly grammatically incorrect or „wrong‟ according to many prescriptive grammatical rules. Therefore, what enables some learners to be able to produce pragmatically correct language in the correct context or situation seems to be of great importance to language teaching professionals. However, after doing a preliminary literature review on a number of areas related to the role of pragmatics in the ESL/EFL classroom, an easily available, clear and concise body of information relating to pragmatics teaching/learning for front-line ESL/EFL teachers appears to be unavailable. Although the search cannot necessarily be seen as exhaustive or complete, it involved a large number of hours,and yielded very little practical advice or guidance, especially when compared to the amount of practical information that could be generated within a similar time frame when looking into the pedagogy of areas such as vocabulary, writing, reading listening or speaking. Therefore, it is currently very difficult for educators to start tackling the area of pragmatics in the classroom, at least in an informed, logical and confident pedagogical manner. Aims Further research has been carried out in order to answer a number of questions, and provide some clear and concise information on the area of pragmatics for front-line teachers of English as a foreign or second language. The paper is based not only on a review of some key literature and research from the field of pragmatics, but also includes a summary of the results of a reasonably extensive search for commercially available pragmatics-based textbooks, as well as online materials. The main questions that this paper is concerned with are as follows: 1. What is pragmatics and how is it defined within a language context? 2. Is pragmatic competence practically teachable and if so, what approach should be adopted? 3. What teaching materials and resources are available to teachers at the moment? The information addressed within the above three questions aims to help teachers, understand the basic concepts of pragmatics, evaluate if pragmatic instruction is effective and justifiable with regard to classroom hours, and understand the teachers role with regard to presentation of pragmatically appropriate language. Additionally, it is hoped that teachers will be given a list of useful resources and materials to be used when addressing pragmatic competence in the classroom.