Bringing English to Chinese rural communities

Zhan.com, a Shanghai-based company that offers online English courses, has launched a series of philanthropic distance-training platforms to provide language training to teachers in rural China.

The company, which also prepares students for entrance exams for overseas universities and offers English-language testing training courses, has provided 500,000 yuan ($76,300) in funding to the China Youth Development Foundation, and the two will work together on delivering the training.

Many rural communities still lack qualified English teachers, and the skill levels that do exist among staff have often fallen well behind those in the country's major cities.