Abstrac. This research aims to find the apology strategy frequently used by male and female students of English Department 5th semester of Sebelas Maret University and how they express their apology. This research is a descriptive qualitative research. The data of this research were taken from the students’ answers in the questionnaire. The technique of collecting data was Discourse Completion Task (DCT). Analysis, discussion and conclusion were the techniques of analyzing data. This research was focused on apology strategies by Trosborg (1995).
    The results of this research are as follows; 1) Male students frequently use the Expression of Regret strategy. Meanwhile, female students frequently use Explanation or Account, 2) Male and Female students of English Department 5th semester of Sebelas Maret University use Explain or Account when they express the apology to someone who has equal power with friends or colleagues, equal power with distant acquaintances or strangers, more power with friends or colleagues, and less power with distant acquaintances or strangers. Expression of Regret is used when the hearer is someone who has less power with close friends or intimates and equal power with close friends or intimate. The combination of apologizing strategy of Explain or Account plus Offer of Repair is used when the hearer has more power with close friends or intimates such as mother or father. For DCT 2 and DCT 5, there is a difference between male and female students on how they express apology. Male students use apology strategies of  Expression of Regret for those two DCT because they tend to express the apology directly meanwhile, female students express the apology strategy with  Offer of Repair. Female students tend to offer to repair the damage than to explain the reason because they want to repair the relationship. It is found that female students use many combination strategies (20 strategies) than male students (11 strategies) because female students want to deepen their apology to the hearer. Furthermore, both male and female students use word markers such as “really”, “very”, and “so” and word markers involving God such as “Astagfirullah” and “Oh my God” to maximize the degree of apology.