This study compared patterns in the requests of native Persian-speakers (n=50) and native speakers of American English (n=52) under the same social constraints. Students were undergraduate students in their native countries. Data were gathered by controlled elicitation (open questionnaire) and coded for degree of directness. Results show the Persian speakers were much more direct than American speakers when making requests, and that Persian speakers used considerably more alerters, supportive moves, and internal modifiers than American speakers. It is suggested that in some languages such as Persian, speakers may compensate for level of directness by such strategies. It is also noted that these differences in requestive speech acts may cause some cross-cultural communication problems. Implications for teaching awareness of directness conventions in second language teaching are discussed. Contains 24 references. (MSE)