The field of L2 pragmatics demonstrates the effect of instructional intervention on the development of L2 learners' pragmatic competence. Nevertheless, effective instruction requires knowledge of pragmatic performances of L2 learners in naturally occurring conversations, in comparison to those of the target community speakers. This study, using a conversation analytic approach, examines responses of American students of Japanese to compliments issued by native speakers (NS) of Japanese in a dyadic interaction in three different settings: naturally occurring conversations between NSs and nonnative speakers (NNS) outside of classroom, free-topic conversations, and fixed-topic conversations between NSs and NNSs in a classroom setting. The results show that naturally occurring conversations outside of the classroom occasionally provide NNSs with a dispreferred environment which orients them to steer the interactional trajectory to negotiate and create affiliative relations with the interlocutors, using so-called evading strategies, which are often used among speakers of the target community. In contrast, such a sequential environment was not observed in the conversations in a classroom setting.