Abstract
Chinese learners of English have become the most populous ESL learners in the world. When referring to Chinese ESL learners, oftentimes, such learners are assumed to have the same L1 background as if they are all native users of Mandarin only. This is not necessarily wrong considering Mandarin is the standard dialect of Chinese and is predominantly used in education and media. Socio-politically, Mandarin is the prestigious dialect in China and many overseas Chinese communities. However, this does not mean a Mandarin Chinese speaker is always monodialectal. The fact is, a number of Mandarin speakers use another Chinese dialect at home and have picked up Mandarin only as their second dialect at school. This means a Chinese speaker has a great chance to be bidialectal, or multidialectal.
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