Cultural competency, or proficiency, has become an increasingly indispensable and significant part of foreign language education. While apt attention has been given to the target culture, the learner's native culture, deemed by some educators to be essential to the pursuit of the target c target culture, has received relatively little and unsystematic study. This paper examines, through a survey analysis, how two groups of university students viewed the role of their native culture (i.e., Chinese/Taiwanese) in achieving cultural understanding and proficiency of the American and British cultures. The focus was upon how students viewed the relationship between Chinese culture and English cultures, and their attitudes toward Chinese and English cultures. The findings presented here should serve as a foundation for curriculum design and pedagogical enhancement of the target culture in the language classroom.
