
This is a free comprehensive online guide written by career educators and experienced foreign experts in China for prospective and current foreign teachers that contains volumes of well-documented information about living and teaching English in China. It covers more than 50 topics and addresses what every foreign teacher should know before accepting a job offer. If you are thinking about living and teaching English in China, then you owe it to yourself to read this guide.
Either before or after reviewing the guide, you should take our China English Teacher Self-Assessment test. This 20-item questionnaire will give you an excellent idea about how competitive you will be as an English teacher in China, as well as how easy or difficult your adjustment to life in China will be.
After you've had a chance to read the guide, we ask that you take just a couple of minutes to complete our reader survey so that we can be more responsive to your needs in the future. In addition, if you are or were a foreign teacher in China, we invite you to take our China Foreign Teacher Satisfaction Survey.
This guide consists of 50 topics or chapters and each chapter is written to be read independently. The chapters are organized across two broad categories: teaching English in China and living in China. Although the chapters about various aspects of living in China are oriented to prospective foreign teachers, they can be read and enjoyed by anyone who is thinking about moving to China for any reason.
A good place to start is simply to browse the main menu to your left or, for a visual layout of the entire guide, you can take a look at guide’s site map and topic index. If you are primarily interested in obtaining a good idea about how competitive you would be in the English teaching job market, as well as gauging how easy or difficult your psychosocial adjustment to China will be, we encourage you to take our China English Teacher Self-Assessment test. If you are pressed for time and want a brief overview and discussion of the most salient issues you need to be aware of, then the Comprehensive Summary Checklist is an excellent place to start. If you are completely unfamiliar with China's educational system and Chinese students, it is highly recommended you first read our overview titled China's Education System, Chinese Students, and the Foreign English Teacher. For a detailed description of the vocational, sociodemographic and personal aspects of teaching English in China, see the unit on Is Teaching English in China for Me?
Finally, don't hesitate to use our highly robust search engine if you can't find what you are looking for (accessible just under the main menu bar on your left). Almost all of the requests we receive for additional topics are for subjects that are already included in our nearly 600-page Guide. Although we've done our very best to label and organize our main topic headings as clearly as possible, there is a plethora of related information included under hundreds of subheadings that won't be apparent to you if you simply browse the Guide's main headings from the menu bar.
This guide has been optimized for use with Firefox, versions 2.x and 3.x, and Internet Explorer (IE), version 7.x. It has also been successfully tested for use with Chrome 1.0.154 (Google), Safari 4 (Apple) and Opera 9.64. Earlier versions of these browsers or completely different browsers that are not CSS-standards compliant may produce unpredictable results in the guide's layout.
You must have JavaScript enabled in your browser in order for the cascading menu bar, various tab panels, and animated text boxes and slides throughout the guide to work properly. Although the guide can be viewed with JavaScript disabled, it will not be as esthetically pleasing or convenient to use. At least one plugin for Firefox, AdBlock Plus, has been positively identified as interfering with the loading of style sheets and several other ad blocking and antiviral programs may interfere with the execution of JavaScript on this website.
The guide will display properly at all screen resolutions but, due to the size of the embedded graphics, we recommend viewing the guide at the highest screen resolution possible up to and including 1680 x 1050.