This thesis reports on a study of Chinese EFL learners speech acts in the given situations with an attempt to see whether their language achievement contributes significantly to their ability to perform speech acts. The data were obtained with the instrument of MCQs consisting of 20 speech sets by examining the speech acts of two groups of subjects totalled 89, 45 of whom have passed the language achievement test CET4 and 44 of whom have passed CET6, representative of learners having intermediate and advanced language achievement respectively. The native speakers speech acts in the same situation were used as the measure. The speech acts and the mean of the failure rates of these two groups of subjects were analysed and compared. The statistical data reveal that both groups of learners had speech-act breakdowns in performing these routine speech acts and that the advanced learners didnt perform much better than the intermediate learners. The major findings include: (a) both groups of subjects are incompetent in performing speech acts (b) language achievement wouldnt predict the ability to perform speech acts (c) undue importance attached to linguistic knowledge in EFL learning would hamper the development of learners ability to perform speech acts. These findings offer insight into college EFL teaching and testing.