Engineering mechanics is the basic course in civil engineering. The students’professional competence can be enhanced by teaching method reform. This article describes six aspects in the teaching reform attempts: inducing the students to establish correct view of life and professional ethics, enhancing the relationship between learning and engineering practice, improving the evaluation system by the way of open homework, establishing the relationship with following courses, improving the diversity of experimental contents, improving the student competency in mechanics competitions. These attempts show that these measures were recognized by the students,and can effectively strengthen the professional competence.