-The article is good and well written. - The title is relevant and it is related to the contents of the article. - The abstract is good as it contains an introduction about the topic, methodology and results but it lacks the theory or model of analysis. - For the references, the researchers have used a good deal of references, many of them are recent, yet, it seems that they do not fully adhere to the APA citation system when documenting their references. For example, the initials of the titles of journal should be capitalized, i.e., Japanese learners of English. JALT Journal should be written as Japanese Learners of English JALT Journal. The researchers are highly recommended to reconsider the references in the Reference List according to the APA citation system.. Also in documenting, the 'Al' in Arabic names are to be removed and the first letter of the name is to be considered, for example, Al-Issa isto appear as Issa in the Reference List.

Going through the introduction, makes it clear that the researchers have used a good deal of studies in this area of pragmatics. The research questions are introduced and stated briefly and clearly by the researchers in a separate section and they are not shown in the abstract. The researchers are to show the research question(s) of the study in the abstract first and not to postpone this to a later stage. In other words, the researchers need to refer to the research gap in the abstract rather than to postpone it to a later stage.

The process of subject selection is clear in the section of methodology which comprises participants, subject and analysis: -The participants in the study are 40; 20 Yemeni students and 20 American students. - The variables recommended are related to status: lower status, the same status and higher status. - The study data and the criteria are not exposed to external inter-raters to confirm the work. - The study can be replicated due to having a good deal of details in the literature review and the methodology.

-The data are presented in an appropriate way, tables are relevant, informative and clearly presented. When going through the analysis, the following points are noticed: * The Frequency and order of semantic formulae are nicely presented. * A good coverage of the situations is seen. *All the tables are presented clearly. - Units, rounding and numbers in decimals are appropriate. - Titles, rows, and columns are stated correctly. - Categories, sections and sub-section are grouped appropriately. - The texts in the discussion further develops the section of results which statistically and practically highlight the details of the six situations.

The results are presented in a section that is preceded by a sub-section of analysis (as part of the researchers' methodology) and followed by a detailed section of discussion which provided a good coverage of the topic under discussion. - The conclusion of the present paper answers the study aims. - The concluding remarks are not supported by references or results of other scholars but cross validation is nicely done within the discussion part. -Since the study deals with a comparison between two languages and two cultures, there is a great opportunity to conduct future research in this area where apology, invitation and requests are the focus of the study.

On the whole, -The study design is appropriate to achieve the study aim and to answer the research questions. - The study added to what is already known in this topic: replies to the speech acts of request and invitation and what accompanies them in relation to pragmatic failure due to pragmatic transfer.

Structuring the comments into a full review: The article under examination is about the negative pragmatic transfer that is expected from the application of the two speech acts of requests and invitations and intonation on Arabic and American speakers (English and non-English speakers) and how each reply and the reasons for the differences in their replies. The Discourse-Completion Task is used as the study tool and it is not supported by any follow up activity. Six situations are selected by the researchers and applied to 40 participants; 20 Arab Yemeni participants and 20 English American participants. The study has come to the conclusion that pragmatic transfer was evident in terms of the overall strategy use, frequency and order of refusal strategies. The study ends with some points among which is that to generalize the results , other face threating speech acts need to be investigated and there was no control for gender variable despite its importance. Another point is that the study did not include follow-up interviews with the participants.

Overall strengths of the article lie in the suitability of the title, the researchers' adherence to the principal layout of writing academic articles, namely, having an abstract (including the keywords), introduction, literature review, methodology, data analysis and discussion and conclusions. So there is a sequence and flow of ideas. The gap in literature is stated clearly. All references cited in-text are listed in the reference list at the end of the study. Tables are implemented to clarify and add information rather than to summarize. The article ends up with some conclusions and (pedagogical) limitations. The impact the article might have in the field is that it incorporates different pragmatic components , namely, refusals, requests and invitations, in an interesting way to show how the pragmatic transfer takes place when applying some pragmatic issues to non-English speakers who speak English as a foreign language. This study is of value to those interested in pragmatics and pragmatic failure and transfer..

As for the specific comments on the weaknesses of the article and what could be done to improve it, some minor issues have been noticed which will definitely not underestimate the quality of the paper and as the following: - It is preferable to include some terms like 'pragmatic transfer' and/or 'pragmatic competence' to the list of key words. - Abbreviations that appear in the tables such as ANSs, HP, LP, ENSs and the numbers (from one to four) need to be made clear prior to the tables so as to make it easy to the readers to smoothly follow and comprehend. -Having two research questions in a separate section makes it more logical to show the results as an answer to them. - It is preferable to have one follow up activity to support the results. -The conclusion part is expected to include some detailed conclusions, i.e., the most important ones. - The limitations in the conclusion can be introduced in a separate section. -Some pedagogical implications are to be added. -APA citation system i to be fully adhered to when listing the references in the reference list.

At the end, I wish the researchers the best of luck in their future work.