The study reported  EFL students’ awareness on apology and request through
cross cultural learning activities viewed from group discussion and role playing.
This study aims at describing what types of cross cultural learning activities used
in contributing EFL students’ awareness on apology funct ion and how the process
occurred in EFL setting of university students and exploring what phenomena
occurred in CCU classroom of EFL students and what solutions provided to
overcome the problems. The data analyzed in this study were collected in Satya
Wacana Christian University and Sebelas Maret University. The study used
qualitative method in nature by employing observations, questionnaires, and
interviews adapted from previous studies. Discourse Completion Tasks
Questionnaires (DCTQ) was distributed to nineteen EFL students to find out their
responds on situations concerning apology and request, then the qualitative data
were obtained from individual interviews carried out with EFL students who came
three different ethnic groups, namely Javanese, Bataknese and Chinese. The
results showed two main findings. The former helps the students to be aware of
apology and request functions by implementing CCU’s group discussions and role
play learning activities. In this respect, the participants were found to use many
kinds of apology and request strategies, in which they clearly demonstrated
awareness on using adequate apology and request forms to meet the requirements
of certain situations and relationships, including politeness and directness or
indirectness. The latter refers to a socio cultural phenomenon which was
discovered in the form of ethnic group variation that led to meaning variation
through segmental (different vowel and consonant pronunciation) and
suprasegmental (different level of loudness and forcing tone) cues. Related to this,
Discourse Completion Task and Role playing with flash cards or Oral Discourse
Completion Task were found to be ways to overcome communication problems.