Different versus One Chinese Linguistic Variety to Teach: What’s behind the Question?

The increasing number of students who choose to learn Chinese outside Chinese borders and before going to China raises the question, among the others, of the variety to teach. If the most frequently selected option is the standard, this choice may not encounter the favor of all learners, whose needs and features have also changed in the last decades. Aim of this chapter is to illustrate the relationship between standard and variety of Chinese from the pedagogical perspective and to critically analyse the debate on the choice of the linguistic variety to teach both in China and abroad.