The use of the first language cultural norms in the second language was tested during a three week oral examination from the language used by 248 undergraduates in the Faculty of Economics, University of Malaya. The speech act of disagreement taught in the classroom ranged from direct disagreement (emphatic and assertive) to less direct ways of disagreement such as partial disagreement, partial agreement to agreement. Each group of four students had to choose the suitable speech from disagreement options. The analysis showed that about 78% of the students used indirect means of disagreement and of the 20% who used direct disagreement only about 3% used the more assertive utterances of disagreement. The less ‘assertive’ statements reflecting the norm of disagreement in the first language were often used. Such patterns are grammatically correct and sociolinguistically acceptable within the Malaysian/Asian environment. In fact, the more assertive forms would be considered rude and ‘kasar’ (rough). The writers therefore strongly recommend the acceptance of the first language cultural norms into the second language and are of the view that such norms should be reflected in language teaching instructional materials.