A Study Of Second Culture Acquisition And Its Implications For FLT

This thesis reports an empirical study concerning students'second culture acquisition (SCA) and the current state of culture teaching in foreign language teaching.Compared with second language acquisition (SLA), SCA has remained to be a new topic.Since language and culture are very closely interrelated, SCA has something in common with SLA in that both involve a process of"internalization".Unlike SLA which results in dual non-interfering linguistic systems, SCA suggests the integration of cultural elements into an already—existing cultural system rather than the development of a totally new one. SCA is more difficult than SLA in that cultural competence consists of both explicit and implicit aspects and that culture is ethnocentric.In light of the theories of SCA, three hypotheses were presented: the first one is that there is not necessarily a straight-line relationship between SCA and SLA; another is that foreign language classes serve as the best channels for students'SCA; the third one is that ages play a role in SCA. An empirical study was carried out among 160 third-year English majors at three universities in Changchun in December, 2005. A self-made questionnaire and a socio-cultural test designed by Wang Zhenya were used as instruments.The results of the empirical study reveal the following things: Foreign language students who possess high level of second language competence do not necessarily possess high level of second culture competence; foreign language classes fail to serve as the best channels for students'SCA; ages play a role in SCA; foreign teachers play a positive role in students'SCA.The results and findings of this study call for special attention to culture teaching in FLT and bring many implications for culture teaching in FLT.