Sociocultural Factors

1.) I totally agree with that statement. A student may learn a language without going to its spoken country. He may learn grammar rules, forming sentences and even he may communicate fluently with the help of listening and speaking tools. He may have all skills of that language, but he never learns to understand a meaning from intonation of a native speaker unless he goes to abroad. Language is not only learned, but also is lived. In the last years, people learning foreign languages prefer the courses abroad to the ones in their own country.
They have a chance to learn language where it is spoken and to see the society talking that target language.
2.)He can express himself completely. In other words, he has no difficulty while telling something about himself without knowing the basic elements of culture. However, a person who knows both culture and language expresses himself more clearly and more effectively. He knows how to make people listen to him. The one who does not know about culture may have difficulty to attract the listener's attention because he just speaks. He does not use gesture and mimes. He does not intonate well. So his expressing may be inadequate.
3.)Of course, learning a language with a different alphabet is more difficult than learning a one with the same alphabet with the mother tongue. If the alphabets of first language and target language are same, learners do not exert effort to get the each letter of alphabet. If these are different from each other, students also try to learn the letters and this push them. It makes learning language process more difficult and longer. For example, when I was taking Russian Courses I spent two months just for its alphabet.