This study aimed to examine apology strategies used by Iranian and Russian students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in both informal and formal contexts, as part of the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP) project. Additionally, this study sought to explore the impact of social distance and social dominance on the frequency of apology strategies and internal intensifiers across Russian, Persian, and English languages. This research included 84 participants who engaged in two role- play apologizing situations, which were then coded according to Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper\\\\\\\'s apology taxonomy and analyzed. The results indicated that Persian and Russian EFL learners used more formulaic pragmatic structures compared to English native speakers (ENS), with the most frequent apology semantic formula used in Persian being Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFID) and in Russian being Explanation or Account. Moreover, the values assigned to the external context variables affected the frequency of internal intensifiers in different situations. The study’s implications for intercultural communication are also discussed.

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