HISTORICAL LANDMARKS IN CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH

According to researches, sociocultural elements of SLA centered on issues in

acculturation, culture shock, social distance, culture “learning”, and attitudes
toward cultures and beyond one’s own.

Referring to acculturation and culture shock, L2 learning normally involves the

phenomenon of developing a new identity, which is known as acculturation,
and has to do with the reorientation of thinking, feeling, and communication.
Culture shock, on the other hand, has to do with the psychological crisis that
L2 learners might experience when understanding a new culture, such as
anger, indecision, frustration, unhappiness, loneliness, and even physical
illness.

Here, the author presents 4 successive stages of culture acquisition which are:

1. an initial period of excitement and euphoria

2. culture stress or culture shock, erosion of self-esteem and security
3. gradual recovery, adjustment to new ways of thinking, feeling and acting
4. a final stage of adaptation/integration, acceptance of a new identity.

In addition to what has been stated, Lambert’s research on acculturation,

claimed that the strongest dose of anomie is experienced when linguistically a
person begins to “master” the foreign language and a new culture
simultaneously.

Social Distance

This term has relevance to the explanation of some aspects of acculturation. It

refers to the cognitive and affective proximity of two cultures that come into
contact within an individual. An example of this is the comparison of the
similarity between Canadians and Americans, which cultures are similar,
however, if we compare Chinese and Americans, they are relatively dissimilar.

In accordance with John Schumann (1976) social distance consists of several

possible factors, which include the following:

 Dominance, power relationships across two cultures

  The extent to which integration into a second culture is possible.
 The congruency of the two cultures in question.

These factors were used by the author to describe positive and negative
language learning situations. A positive situation would be a group of L2 and a
group of the target language with positive attitude toward each other, and an
example of negative situation would be two cultures which are no congruent
and have negative attitudes toward each other. But in spite of that, Bill Acton
came up with a different theory, he mentioned that distance between cultures is
not relevant, he said that what needs to be taken into consideration is the
perceived social distance, since it is what learners perceived what forms their
own reality.

In addition to this theory, Acton, proposed an optimal distance model of SLA.

He explained that an adult who fails to master a second language may have
failed to synchronize linguistic and cultural development. Svanes, on the other
hand, found that students have a higher language proficiency if they have a
balanced and critical attitude to the target language students.

Attitudes

Attitudes have a relevant effect on language learning since students learn an L2

depending on the attitude they have and how motivated they are. If they have a
negative attitude about staying in a foreign country, or adapting to a different
culture, it would be by far more difficult for them to acquire the language,
however, if their attitude is positive they will definitely learn easily.