Perceptions and Practices in Teaching Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation in Nordic Contexts: Insights from Swedish CFL Teachers

Chinese language teaching has a long history in the Nordic region, especially in Sweden. However, research on teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in the Nordic context remains limited. This chapter presents a qualitative study exploring the teaching of Chinese pronunciation at Swedish universities. Semi-structured interviews were employed to capture the experiences, strategies, and challenges faced by CFL teachers. Data were collected from six Chinese language teachers across three Swedish universities and cross-referenced with the perceptions of six Swedish university students. The main findings show that Mandarin pronunciation poses a major learning challenge and that teachers employ varied teaching methods and feedback strategies shaped by their beliefs, accumulated experience, and contextual constraints. Interpreting these findings in Simon Borg’s teacher cognition model and Jack C. Richards’s maxims in language teaching, this work illustrates how teachers’ knowledge, reasoning, and contextual realities jointly influence pronunciation pedagogy. The results also point to the need for professional development, more opportunities for pedagogical exchange, and improved teaching resources tailored to Swedish learners, as well as strengthened regional collaboration across the Nordic CFL community.