It is often observed that students mostly fail to recognize and produce certain illocutionary acts, particularly congratulation and condolence. A lot of studies have demonstrated that failure in the performance of these speech acts are mainly due to the inability of learners to identify the suitable meaning and to produce the suitable form. Thus, the study intends to detect Iraqi and Lebanese EFL students' performance of these two speech acts , arriving at the reasons behind this failure. The study hypothesizes that both groups find recognizing condolence and congratulation easier than producing them. In addition, students' failure is ascribed to the influence of LI culture and their lack of pragmatic and linguistic knowledge. To achieve the aims of the study, a test of two questions (recognition and production) has been designed and administered to two samples of Iraqi and Lebanese EFL fourth-year college students to detect their abilities in recognizing and producing the speech acts of congratulation and condolence