外语教学尤其是二语教学兴盛于二十世纪，在方法和理论上经历了从一般外语教学法到注重语言习得，再到文化习得的演进历程。早期教学法注重语言成分和语言结构的教学，如语法翻译法、直接法以及视听法，从二十世纪中后期二语教学逐渐注重语言外的因素如学习者的情感与动机、学习情境、交际行为等涉及文化的诸多因素，如情境教学法、交际教学法、社团教学法和暗示教学法等，探讨如何营造出像第一语言习得的自然环境和无意识氛围增进语言习得的效果。最近几十年，随着世界范围内跨文化交流的日益增加，文化因素对于语言习得的作用得到更多的关注，如克拉申的自然教学法、舒曼的文化适应理论以及源于维戈茨基的社会文化理论等，将语言习得引向更深更广的文化领域，文化习得成为促进语言习得的关键力量。
Foreign language teaching, especially second language teaching, flourished in the 20th century. Its methods and theories have evolved from general foreign language teaching to language acquisition, and then to cultural acquisition. Early teaching methods focused on the teaching of language components and structure, such as grammatical translation method, direct method and audio-visual method. From the middle and late 20th century, second language teaching gradually focused on non-linguistic factors, such as learner's emotion and motivation, learning situation, communicative behavior and many other cultural factors, such as Situational Language Teaching, Communicative Language Teaching, Community Language Learning and Suggestopedia. Explore how to create a natural environment like first language acquisition and unconscious atmosphere to enhance the effect of language acquisition. In recent decades, with the increasing cross-cultural communication worldwide, more attention has been paid to the role of cultural factors in language acquisition. For example, Krashen's Natural Approach, Schumann's Acculturation theory and the Sociocultural theory derived from Vygotsky have led language acquisition to a deeper and broader cultural field, and cultural acquisition has become a key force to promote language acquisition.
