Using Flipped Classroom to Enhance Mandarin Speaking Skills: A Systematic Literature Review

Flipped classroom has become one of the latest teaching and learning strategies for teaching Mandarin speaking skills in China. However, there is a lack of comprehensive research on the status of Chinese undergraduates' use of flipped classrooms to learn Mandarin speaking skills. To address this gap, this paper provides a systematic review of research findings related to the use of flipped classrooms in learning Mandarin speaking skills among undergraduates published between 2013-2023. Guided by the PRISMA statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses), the systematic review was conducted using the China national knowledge internet (CNKI), Wanfang Data, and VIP databases, and a total of 20 articles were screened to identify relevant research. The findings indicated that research on the use of flipped classrooms to learn Mandarin speaking skills by Chinese university students is in its infancy, with fewer studies on flipped classrooms in terms of fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, and organization of Mandarin speaking skills , and most of the studies focusing on curriculum design, teaching resources, and classroom interactions in the use of flipped classrooms to learn Mandarin speaking skills The research findings also emphasized the challenges faced by Chinese university students in using the flipped classroom to improve their Mandarin speaking skills. There is still room for improvement in this research by narrowing down the scope of the review as a direction for future research on Mandarin flipped classrooms and practicing different search techniques such as snowballing, citation tracking and reference searching.