Before coming to the United States, Ling Zhao taught Chinese to foreign students at Beijing Foreign Studies University, where, for three years, she also chaired the program for teaching Chinese as a second language. In the United States, she has taught beginning, intermediate and advanced Chinese at Dennison University, The University of the Pacific and at Bucknell College. She has been a visiting research scholar at the East Asian Studies Center of Indiana University, Bloomington, and for four summers she has been on the faculty of the Middlebury College Chinese Language Summer School. She currently teaches Chinese at all levels.

Zhao's research interests include Chinese syntax, studying and translating Chinese classical literature and poetry, and teaching method theory.