The Apology Strategies of Malaysian and Iraqi undergraduate students represent an investigation of cultural norms which affect spoken Apology Speech Acts. The study evaluated apology methods used between Malaysian and Iraqi students while studying the effects of collectivism and hierarchy on these techniques. The research included 120 participants sorted into equal groups of 60 students from Malaysia and Iraq ranging in age from 18 to 23 who studied different academic subjects. Data collection used Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), surveys, semi-structured interviews, followed by combined quantitative and qualitative analysis of these data. The study produced substantial variations between the chosen apology methods of both populations. The majority of Malaysian research participants (58.33%) deployed indirect apologetic approaches that incorporated both social harmony markers and hedging techniques due to their collectivist and harmonious cultural values. The Iraqi student participants showed preference toward directness (63.33%) as well as formal language methods that explicitly expressed responsibility, in accordance with their society’s hierarchical structure. The research demonstrated Malaysian students worked to protect their group harmony yet Iraqi students emphasized individual performance combined with proper respect to authority figures. The research results affect both intercultural communication practices as well as second-language acquisition methods. Language education professionals benefit from cultural enlightenment about apology strategies to create training materials and educational curricula. The findings gather from this study help people from different cultures understand each other better while reducing communication errors between people of different backgrounds. The research adds knowledge to cross-cultural pragmatics through its exploration of cultural forces that direct language strategies in apology situations.
