1. Introduction

With the development of economic globalization, the soft power of each country has become an essential indicator of a country's economy. As an integral part of soft power, culture also plays a crucial role in national development. As a vehicle of culture, language is a significant component of cultural output. As Sapir pointed out, "Language needs an environment. It cannot exist without culture and the tradition and belief inherited by society" [1]. Every language is based on a certain culture, and its development is affected by the development of human society. Hence, as national cultures develop, languages evolve. In the process of language acquisition, most L2 learners are able to acquire more comprehensive knowledge of L2 through continuous long-term accumulation. The inherent relationship between language and culture causes most second language learners, after years of learning, to have a certain gap between their ability to use their second language and their native language due to differences in cognitive thinking.

Linguists have focused on the relationship between language acquisition and other academic fields. That is to say, the integral component of culture and one of its aspects is language. Valette believes that the scope of cultural learning should include five objectives: "cultural awareness, politeness principle, understanding of daily life, including unfamiliar customs, understanding of cultural values and analysis of the target language culture" [2]. The prospect of cross-cultural understanding is enhanced by mastering a foreign language. The language of an ethnic group inherits the cultural traits of that group, as each has a distinct growth history and cultural foundation. In short, these large differences between different national cultures create barriers to language acquisition.

Additionally, the question of whether cultural conflict affects all aspects of second language acquisition and the extent to which it affects all aspects has been the focus of research. For the sake of helping learners to find appropriate learning methods, to overcome the problems encountered in second language acquisition, and to stimulate learner's interest in second language learning has become an urgent topic of discussion. In this context, the study of the impact of cultural conflict on second language acquisition provides a theoretical basis for the learner during the acquisition process. Correspondingly, help learners build improved second language acquisition models and discover suitable methods for dissimilar second language learners of different genders, ages and cultures.

2. Theoretical Framework

Before proceeding to the analysis, we must specify two concepts: foreign language and second language. Generally, a second language is a language learned or acquired after the mother tongue. The second language category studied is second language acquisition. It is learning to speak the language of a country other than one's native tongue. However, the second language we quote in this paper means the language of other people. By second language acquisition, we mean the acquisition of the language of another country. Nonetheless, this paper will focus on a few influential theories in second language learning and temporarily analyze the implications of these second language learning theories in the application of foreign language learning and teaching. By analyzing and studying these theories, we can find ways to improve the learning ability of L2 learners.

2.1 Main theories of second language acquisition

2.1.1 Krashen's monitoring model

In the 1970s and early 1980s, many theoretical models were proposed by linguists to explain the process of second language acquisition. One of the most influential and well-known of these models is Krashen's monitoring theory, which considers the problem of second language acquisition in a comprehensive way. In the early 1980s, there were as many as ten hypotheses. In recent years it has been reduced to five main propositions. Specifically, the input hypothesis and the output hypothesis are analyzed.

2.1.2 Output Hypothesis

This hypothesis was first proposed by Swain in 1985. It is considered a refinement of the interaction hypothesis and a complementary interpretation of it. This means that if a second language learner wants to receive a high level of foreign language, they should receive a large amount of comprehensible input. However, relying on intelligible inputs is not sufficient. Because the impact of language input on learner language acquisition may be limited, it is not a direct cause of second language acquisition. In order to truly acquire a second language, language output must be performed in addition to accepting intelligible input. This assumption truncates the process of second language acquisition in several forms.

In summary, output under special conditions are capable of facilitating language acquisition by allowing learners to experiment with their interlingual skills. In this way, the learner will become more aware of their interlingual problems, and this perception may motivate the learner to focus more on discovering relevant inputs.

3. Intercultural Communication and Cultural Differences

Everything changes and evolves in this ever-evolving world. As a result, the world, people and society are in a dynamic process of development as people's contacts continue to increase. Thus, the theory of intercultural communication came into existence. "The study of intercultural communication is about changes—changes in the worlds fabric of social relationships and how we must adjust to them" [3]. Although people come from different cultural backgrounds and some cultural backgrounds are even far apart, communication between them is no longer impossible.

Cross culture in the study refers to cross culture between two ethnic groups, two countries, and two completely different language systems. By analyzing the impact of cross-cultural communication on second language acquisition, we can gain a deeper understanding and explanation of second language acquisition.

Communication is an effective way to assist learners in conveying culture, which will be reflected and transmitted through communication. Correspondingly, different learners respond differently when encountering differences in communication. Analyzing the causes of cultural conflicts in terms of language barriers and differences allows for a clear understanding of the profound impact of culture on second language acquisition.

From the perspective of language, language is an essential tool for communicating information and a crucial component for distinguishing between cultures. There are three main linguistic barriers in the process of intercultural communication: variable meanings, verbal communication styles, and the adaptive function of language. In other words, people who use a direct style of verbal communication are more likely to cause conflict than those who use an indirect style.

4. Research Methodology

The questionnaire was used for practical investigations and the SPSS statistical software was used for quantitative statistical studies. The cultural questionnaire is primarily used to understand the learner's understanding of the second language's cultural context. Through the design of the questionnaire, learners were judged on their understanding of L2 culture. The questionnaire contained descriptions in a second language and the students were asked to judge whether these descriptions were correct or incorrect. There are ten questions in the questionnaire, with a total score of 100.

The test paper tests mastery of spoken and grammar in a second language. The first part is the oral part and consists of three parts: reading words, reading sentences, and answering questions. The aim is to investigate the fluency, accuracy and content completeness of the learner's spoken language. Check if the student can appropriately pronounce the special phonetic symbols in the words. Whether students pay attention to the skills of continuous reading and skimming, and whether they pay attention to the skills of stressed and stressed-out reading. When answering questions, are the learner's expressions clear and the answers accurate?

5. Presentation of Research Results

5.1 The Relationship between Cultural Understanding and Second Language Acquisition

To explore whether the degree of understanding of the second language culture is related to the score of the second language test, it is able to conduct a second language culture test for the learners. In terms of learner scores, it is split into three categories. The first group scores 1-40 points, indicating a low level of cultural understanding. The second group scores 41-70 points, which has a middle level of cultural understanding. The last group scored 71-100 points, which has a superior level of cultural understanding. Then it is capable of conducting the same paper test for three groups of students. Finally, by analyzing the student's understanding of the degree of education and the results of the second language test, it gets the following forms.

Table 1

The correlation between Chinese learners’ understanding of English culture and English test score

Table 2

The correlation between Chinese learners’ understanding of English culture and English test score

Table 1 and Table 2 show the results of the correlation between Chinese learners’ understanding of English culture and English test scores. From Table 1, it can see that the number of signatures is 0. According to the standard of ANOVA analysis, when p=0.00<0.05, there is a significant difference between at least two of the three groups. That means that the degree of the student's understanding of the second language culture has an impact on their second language grammar and oral performance. According to the rules of Duncan's analysis, if the average of the two is on the same line in the table, it is proved that there is no significant difference between the two. On the contrary, it proves that there is a significant difference between the two. And from Table 2, it can be seen that the averages of the three levels of cultural understanding are not in the same line, which means that the three cultural understandings are significantly different from each other.

Table 3

The results of the correlation between Chinese learners’ understanding of Japanese culture and Japanese test scores

Table 4

The results of the correlation between Chinese learners’ understanding of Japanese culture and Japanese test scores

Table 3 and Table 4 show the results of the correlation between Chinese learners’ understanding of Japanese culture and Japanese test scores. It can be seen that the results of these two tables are the same as those obtained from the above English test. Therefore, from the above four tables, it can draw the following conclusion: no matter whether the learners’ second language and their mother tongue belong to the same cultural environment, their different levels of understanding of the second language culture will lead to different second language grammar and oral test scores. But what are the characteristics of this significant difference, and whether it has its regularity, this cannot draw conclusions from the above tables. Thus, it conducted a correlation analysis on the degree of cultural understanding and test scores, trying to find out the regularity.

Table 5

The result of the correlation between cultural understanding degree and English test scores

Table 6

The result of the Chinese test paper

Table 5 is the result of the correlation between cultural understanding degree and English test scores and Table 6 is the result of the Chinese test paper. From the tables, it can see that the significant difference between the two in each table is 0, less than 0.05. That means that the two sides in each table show significant differences and the data in the table is statistically significant. According to the rules of Pearson correlation analysis, if the Pearson correlation coefficient is greater than 0, both of them show a positive correlation. On the contrary, it presents a negative correlation. And when the absolute value of the Pearson correlation coefficient is greater than or equal to 0.8, it is considered highly correlated between the two. So, from the above tables, it can see that the Pearson correlation coefficient between the cultural understanding degree and English test scores is 0.901 and the Pearson correlation coefficient between the degree and Chinese test scores is 0.936. Therefore, it can know that the learners’ cultural understanding of the second language is positively related to the scores of the second language grammar and spoken language, which means that with the development of the learners’ understanding of the second language culture, their second language grammar and the language will increase.

According to our analysis and discussion of the experimental data, learners perform better in speech and grammar the more they understand the culture of the second language. If learners are able to deepen their cultural awareness, learning a second language will be less hindered by cultural conflicts. As a consequence, acquiring grammatical and verbal proficiency in a second language for learners is significantly hampered by cultural tensions.

5.2. The Secondary Aspects of Oral Performances

Since there are no clear scoring criteria like grammar in spoken language, subjects can only be scored according to the testers' criteria. Therefore, here, to avoid the subjective factors of the tester, we only analyze the average scores for the three subcategories of spoken language.

Table 7

Average of each secondary part with different levels of cultural understanding (English & Chinese)

Table 7 is a summary of the average scores of different aspects of spoken language for different levels of cultural understanding on the English and Chinese tests. From the table, we can see that as the cultural understanding of the learner continues to improve, the fluency, accuracy and completeness of the learner's spoken language also improve. However, we can see from the table that the score of completeness is the lowest regardless of the level of cultural understanding of the learner. In other words, it is still difficult for the learner to output a complete speech. The coherence of this language is primarily due to the influence of the cultural understanding of the learner. When answering questions, learners habitually think first in the mindset of their native language, and when transitioning from their native language to a second language, they are unable to output completely fluently due to cultural conflicts caused by cultural differences. As a result, their output in a second language is often accompanied by repetitions, pauses, etc.

6. Conclusion

The language encompasses a variety of aspects. The most common and prominent aspects are spoken language and grammar. Oral performance and grammar are also critical indicators to test a learner's second language learning achievement. To ensure smooth progress in L2 learning, it is necessary to identify the most essential factors that hinder learners from achieving better L2 grammar and verbal performance. By analyzing the causes of acquisition barriers in the second language acquisition process and the causes of cultural conflict in cross-cultural communication, we can understand that cultural conflict is an influential factor in the successful acquisition of a student's second language. To demonstrate the accuracy of the theoretical analysis, a questionnaire survey and a test paper were used to validate the theory. Based on theoretical discussions and experimental data, the following conclusions are drawn. The level of cultural understanding and cultural conflict of students is closely related to the acquisition of second language grammar and spoken language. Appropriate cultural input is necessary for L2 teaching. When students receive appropriate cultural input, their understanding of L2 increases and cultural conflicts are dealt with more appropriately.

In conclusion, this study provides a new direction in addressing the problem of fossilization in second language acquisition and provides teachers with new ideas for second language teaching from the perspective of language itself. Through research and discussion, learners will pay more attention to cultural acquisition in the future acquisition process. Problems encountered by learners during acquisition have been reasonably explained, providing new ideas for improving learners' interest in learning and facilitating their second language acquisition. For teachers, the study provides new teaching design ideas that help teachers focus on teaching. It provides direction and guidance to learners of different levels of cultural understanding in the order in which all aspects of teaching are presented. In order to ensure the smooth progress of second language acquisition, a number of issues should be focused on at each stage.