This paper reports the results of an exploratory cross-sectional study of pragmaticdevelopment among three groups of primary school students in Hong Kong who completed acartoon oral production task (COPT) designed to elicit requests, apologies, and complimentresponses. The first two of these speech acts are among the most well represented in thepragmatics literature and are also included in the Hong Kong English language syllabus forprimary schools. The latter has also been studied extensively but is not part of the syllabus. Datawas collected in Cantonese using the same instrument. Although a number of developmentalpatterns are revealed—particularly in choice of request strategy, frequency of supportivemoves, and use of adjuncts with apologies and compliment responses—there is littleevidence of sensitivity to situational variation or pragmatic transfer from Cantonese. This studyadds to the small, but growing, body of research on pragmatic development in a secondlanguage.