The article discusses the ways of forming the pragmatic competence of high school students. It is argued that the need for the conscious development of pragmatic competence as an integral part of communicative competence in the learning process is an urgent problem of today. The views of scientists studying the concept of pragmatic competence, as a component of knowledge of the rules for constructing an utterance, their combining into a text (competence of discourse), the ability to use utterances to perform various communicative functions (functional competence), the ability to consistently build an utterance in accordance with interaction schemes (competence of constructing speech). One of the ways to develop the pragmatic competence of high school students is to create extra-curricular associations, that is, the language environment. Indicators and criteria of the dynamics of the formation of pragmatic competence of students on the basis of motivational, content, behavioral components are given. The results of the experiment are presented and the effectiveness of the proposed methods is described.