To date, principles of applied linguistics have been practiced little in the Chinese foreign language (CFL) classroom. Most students of Chinese, the majority of whom are in higher education, are not knowledgeable about linguistics. Most teachers of Chinese in the United States are hired for their interest in Chinese culture or native Chinese language skills, regardless of training in linguistic theory. Most instructional materials are market-oriented and not based on linguistic theory, unlike their recent counterparts for English second language instruction. The linguistic and traditional approaches to teaching CFL differ. Traditionally, foreign language instruction is closely linked to literature study, and classroom techniques are more influenced by individual style than by method. A serious defect of many college CFL curricula is that characters are introduced early in instruction, to the detriment of oral skill development. By contrast, a linguistic approach to teaching CFL recognizes the importance of speaking and emphasizes communicative competence, more appropriate to modern needs. A proposed CFL curriculum focuses on early learning of the system of syllables and tones, use of Romanized Chinese, and the contextual learning of words to reduce confusion about homonyms. Character study comes later. A relatively new communicative textbook is available. (MSE)