American KFL (Korean as a foreign language) students' communicative success depends to a large extent on their ability to express interpersonal meanings with target-language resources. However, information regarding how KFL students acquire, or fail to learn linguistic politeness through classroom learning is scarce. The nature of this study is cross-sectional. In addition, rather than directly examining the effects of particular approaches to instruction, the focus is on the observation of second year KFL students' pragmatic ability, resulting from previous classroom language learning. The goal of this article is twofold: (a) to investigate the second-year KFL students' pragmatic judgment of an appropriate speech act, and (b) to discuss pedagogical implications based on the findings. Overall, the study found that the KFL students got 73.3% correct responses. In addition, the study identified five reasons for the wrong responses. Moreover, as possible factors influencing the students' assessment ability, this study identified the possible effects of negative transfer from their L1 sociopragmatic aspect: the egalitarian value system and the directness of American English (Sohn, 1986; Byon, 2001). Furthermore, the study identified the KFL instructors' lack of awareness regarding the needs of teaching KFL pragmatic elements and the grammar-oriented instructional goals of current KFL curriculum as two factors that need to be readdressed in order to enhance current KFL pragmatic teaching.