In the current teaching of soil mechanics, the backward of solving methods leads to the lack of students' ability to solve practical problems. Taking the data processing of liquid plastic limit test, the calculation of the pre-consolidation pressure, the calculation of the additional stress of foundation and the calculation of landslide stability as examples, this paper showed that the introducing of MATLAB programs in the teaching of soil mechanics could solve many problems caused by traditional teaching methods and improve the teaching efficiency greatly, and also could cultivate the students' practical ability and innovative ability.