On The Role Of Cultural Schemata In Second Culture Acquisition

More and more international students study abroad at the age of globalization, which has pushed the academic research of cross-cultural learning and communication. Second Culture Acquisition (SCA) is an important concept in cross-cultural communication. The acquisition of a new culture involves the integration of new cultural elements into an already-existing system. Cultural schemata (CS) are culture-specific world knowledge and mentally affect every aspect of people’s life. The application of CS theory is of great significance in cross-cultural communication. Therefore, it is urgent to introduce Cultural Schemata theory to make more contributions to SCA. However, SCA is a rather complex and often stressful process. Even though the term has been well established, yet the studies are still far from satisfactory. There are few studies which concern about the role of CS in SCA as well as adopt empirical analysis.This current research analyzes the theoretical relevance of CS to SCA and conducts a case study of American Studies Abroad Program (ASAP) in Chengdu to examine the impacts of international students’CS on their Chinese Culture Acquisition. Qualitative research methods have been applied in order to provide a cross-cultural perspective into the international students’views and actions. Through extensive date analysis, this thesis finds out three kinds of relationships between first culture schemata and second culture schemata and demonstrates the decisive effects of CS on the results of SCA.The viewpoints in this thesis can be expressed as follow through proposing hypotheses and verifying them:Firstly, the acquisition of cultural schemata of the host culture is essential condition for international students’second culture acquisition. Secondly, cultural schemata are interrelated with each other and can generate appropriate behaviors of international students. Experience in the host culture will cause a change in one’s cultural schema, which could further change all the other cultural schemata and result in behavior’s change. Thirdly, in the host culture, international students experience the stages of self-regulation, self-direction and self-balance.In the stage of self-regulation, they try to resolve ambiguities and to establish integration of information by gradually modifying their native-culture schemas. In the stage of self-direction, they try to reorganize their native culture schemas or to generate host culture schemas to adapt to the host-culture environment.In the stage of self-balance, they take in new elements and keep their previous concepts spontaneously, and contextualize each schema to different situations.Cultural schemata are extremely important to successful second culture acquisition. This thesis demonstrates the possibility of applying CS theory into SCA study and provides some suggestions for Teaching Chinese as Foreign Language and Chinese Culture Teaching, which has great implications for future researches.