| The study aimed to find out: (i) whether learners in a school equipped with sufficient learning materials, qualified English teachers and learners who were sufficiently exposed to English used by native speakers perform appropriately the speech act of compliment responses and the speech act of request in both oral and written communication; and (ii) whether the learners have different performance in their oral and written interactions. The data was taken from written DCT and oral role-play which represented the 43 students’ pragmatic competence in responding to compliments and making request. The data was analyzed by using Robert K. Herbert’s taxonomy of compliment response and Anna Trosborg’s classification of request. Both written and oral data were divided into four situations: conversation with equal status, with lower status, with higher status and with strangers. The result indicated that in general, the respondents were able to accept and respond well to the compliment. However, it should be noted that 10% of the respondents used Non-Agreement strategy in the situation among interlocutor with higher status. Despite the low number, but it should be noted that this is highest Non-Agreement strategy usage compared to the situation with equal status, lower status and with strangers. Whereas, Mannes and Wolfson (1981) stated that in unequal status compliments are frequently assumed flow from those in higher status to those in lower status, not vice versa. Then, in term of request performance, the respondents preferred to use Conventionally Indirect – Hearer based strategy in all situations. The respondents used Conventionally Indirect – Hearer based strategy highly in every situation even when they were expected to perform direct request. Lastly, from this study it can be noted that there was still an “Indonesian way” which will potentially jeopardize the L2 learning process. The pragmatic failure was reflected from the respondents’ preferences to put the word “sorry” in the beginning of their request in all situations, as they believed that it made the request sounds more polite. |