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The purpose of this paper was to investigate the effectiveness of using active teaching methods on students' academic performance. A sample of 35 undergraduate students who took Mandarin as third language has been chosen for this purpose. The students were exposed to nine teaching methods namely (1) compare and contrast, (2) word wall, (3) take note and summarizing, (4) recitation, (5) cues, question and activating prior knowledge, (6) role play, (7) non-linguistic representation, (8) homework and practice, and (9) analysis of students’ work and discussion. From the t-test analysis conducted, it was found that students scored higher t-value of 24.8 in post-test as oppose to pre-test value of 13.6 with the significant value of .00. Hence, it can be concluded that through the implementation of the nine active teaching methods, students have improved their academic performance significantly.   Keywords: active teaching method, Mandarin, undergraduate, academic performance.

Malaysia is a country of diverse ethnicities and cultures. This phenomenon has created various social perceptions and stereotypes between different ethnic groups. Stereotypes serve as a cognitive process for organizing social information in a complex social environment by facilitating information processing. Limited human cognitive ability influences the simple categorization process to operate and receive information. In fact, when one confirms stereotypes against a group it will lead to bias in thought as well as behaviour. Therefore, this paper scrutinizes in general about the belief on the ethnic social cultural that has been embedded in human mind. This research also reviews the stereotypical as a representation of the cognitive and reality of this complex social environment.