This article reports on an exploratory study of instructional issues encountered in the teaching of Mandarin as a foreign language at the university level. The research reveals the sometimes conflicting views held by teachers, researchers, students, and institutions with respect to instructional methods and types of classroom interaction, particularly in the context of form-focused instruction. Data come from regular, recorded classroom observations, questionnaires, and interviews with one teacher and her students over the period of one semester. Findings revealed that, whereas the teacher was committed to providing opportunities for peer interaction and practice and not providing excessive error correction, repetition, or modeling, students on the other hand expressed strong views about the desirability of having less peer interaction rather than more, and conversely, more error correction, repetition, and modeling. The article concludes that further classroom research in non-European language courses is necessary to examine more closely the applicability of findings from previous studies involving primarily European languages and the cognitive and sociocultural basis for students' views, and how and why those views change over time. (Contains 1 figure.)