UNVEILING THE PEDAGOGICAL CHALLENGES OF TEACHING MANDARIN IN ZIMBABWEAN SCHOOLS

Abstract

The burgeoning economic ties between China and other nations have sparked a surge in demand for Mandarin language instruction, leading to its inclusion in foreign language curricula across Africa, including Zimbabwe. However, the pedagogical landscape of teaching Mandarin in Zimbabwean classrooms remains unexplored. This qualitative study bridges this knowledge gap by exploring the challenges faced by Zimbabwean secondary teachers of Mandarin. Twelve secondary school teachers from Harare were purposively selected for in-depth, semi-structured interviews, offering a rich tapestry of experiences in teaching Mandarin. Guided by the Communicative Approach to Language Teaching theory, thematic data was extracted and analyzed, revealing several major challenges including the dominance of English as the language of instruction, cultural disparities between Shona and Chinese, limited instruction time, linguistic incompetencies, learner attributes, restrictive teaching materials, and inadequate access to digital tools. To address these challenges, this study recommends recruiting native-speaker teachers, integrating intercultural competence into the curriculum, and providing digital technologies to support language learning. Furthermore, future research should investigate learner experiences to provide a comprehensive understanding of the complexities involved in teaching Mandarin in Zimbabwean classrooms, ultimately informing strategies to enhance language instruction and learner outcomes.