574 _______________________________________________________ DOI: https://doi.org/10.33258/birle.v3i1.853 Developing Student’s German Language Competencies through Pragmatic Approach in the Classroom for Higher Education Rina Evianty 1 , Risnovita Sari 2 , Muhammad Reza 3 1,2,3 Universitas Negeri Medan, Indonesia rina.frau@yahoo.com I. Introduction Pragmatics is a part of linguistics that can be defined as a study of communicative acts in a sociocultural context (Kasper, 1997). Thomas (1995: 23) suggested that pragmatics is meaning in interaction, because it takes into account the different contributions of the speaker and listener, as well as the utterance and context, in order to make sense. Currently pragmatics plays an important role in language teaching. Granger (by Bardovi-Harlig, 2005) said, Pragmatics has become a major field of study in its own right, in linguistics, and now in language learning and teaching. Pragmatic competence has come to be viewed as an essential part of learners' competence. According to this opinion, pragmatic competence is an important aspect of language teaching that has to be taken into account. It often happens that learners who have a good command of the grammar and vocabulary of the target language, but cannot communicate properly in the target language. Their expressions are often inappropriate to the linguistic Abstract The general goal of teaching German as a foreign language is that learners can communicate appropriately in writing and orally in German. But in fact this goal can often not be achieved. Many learners in higher education master the German grammar and vocabulary, but they are unable to use German language that matches the social context, because they do not have much pragmatics competence. Pragmatic approach based on the function of language as a communication tool is a study of language by involving various aspects outside the language that are able to provide meaning. Pragmatic competence constitutes a significant factor in determining the success of communication. In fact, a German language learner in higher education is not only expected to use language and produce utterances which are understandable or grammatically correct, but is also expected to produce utterances which are socioculturally appropriate. However, for students in higher education who learn German as a Foreign Language (Deutsch als Fremdsprache/DaF), the pragmatic competence, which can actually be acquired naturally through social interaction, is quite difficult to acquire due to the limited. On this basis, pragmatics needs to be integrated into German language courses in higher education, which includes pragma linguistics and socio pragmatic. In this regard, this study describes not only the relationship between pragmatics and German as a foreign language, but also this study is an attempt to define its implications in teaching German as foreign language in higher education. Keywords teaching; German as a foreign language (Deutsch als Fremdsprache/DaF) in higher education; pragmatics; pragmatics competence