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English as a business Lingua Franca (BELF) research and materials for the corporate language training market

by Evan Frendo
August 12, 2025
Evan Frendo
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Drawing on over 30 years of experience in business English teaching and English for Specific Purposes (ESP), primarily in corporate training contexts, Evan Frendo set out to do two things during his webinar for MaWSIG on 5 June 2025: deconstruct English as a business lingua franca (BELF), and discuss its impact on the broader ELT industry, and offer some insights into the world of corporate language training materials and the opportunities it presents for materials writers. This is his summary of his presentation.

Deconstructing English as a business lingua franca (BELF)

I started the presentation with real-world examples of authentic business interactions that I felt challenged traditional ELT notions of priorities in the classroom.

The first example involved a software development team meeting in Germany. Participants included highly proficient German English speakers (C1/C2) and a native English-speaking Indian developer. Despite these high proficiency levels, communication breakdowns occurred. Feedback revealed that the Indian speaker was perceived as “too fast and too technical,” leading to a lack of mutual intelligibility among theoretically advanced English users. My aim was to demonstrate that high individual proficiency does not automatically guarantee effective group communication.

The second example was an exchange of emails between Chinese and German colleagues, riddled with grammatical errors and non-standard phrasing like “I haven’t heard from for some time” and “Looking forward to your sound”. Despite the issues, the only reported communication problem was a contextual one: the German colleague missed a crucial detail about a train station exit, causing difficulties meeting up with his host in Wuhan. This example illustrated that communication problems in real business often stem from contextual misunderstandings, not linguistic inaccuracy.

The third set of examples were taken from actual meetings. Phrases like “I use the before reference” and “I would like listen comments from experts here,” also demonstrated that grammatically “non-standard” English caused no communication issues. This begs the question: are traditional teaching materials, with their focus on presenting models of standard English, and with sets of phrases to use in certain situations, truly preparing learners for the reality of business interactions?

We then moved on to discuss BELF in more detail. In simple terms, BELF research investigates the use of English in international business contexts by observing and recording how people use the language, rather than prescribing how they should use it. This research has consistently found that the priority in such interactions is about getting the job done. 

According to Peltonen and Hu (2025, p.1), “A distinction must be made between the traditional conception of business English (BE) and BELF: whereas BE refers to the language required to function in the workplace, BELF underscores that this English usage is not a static, codified body of knowledge. Rather, BELF is constantly evolving and negotiated in real time between interactants in different contexts.”

Kaankanranta, Louhiala-Salminen and Karhunen (2015 p. 129) provide an oft-cited definition of BELF which emphasizes the difficulty materials writers face: 

“BELF is perceived as an enabling resource to get the work done. Since it is highly context-bound and situation-specific, it is a moving target defying detailed linguistic description.”

I then summarized some of what we know about English in the international workplace based on research (For access to a list of articles on BELF research see https://communicationlights.de/resources/):

  • Communication strategies, not just vocabulary, functions and grammar, are crucial.
  • Mutual intelligibility should be a key focus in language teaching, as shown by the German/Indian meeting example.
  • Sticking to a “standard” model of English is not essential. 
  • Context plays an important part in communication.
  • Passing an international test is no guarantee of workplace performance. Research shows individuals with high test scores may still struggle to communicate effectively in the international workplace.
  • Authentic materials should ideally reflect the learners’ specific real-world context, not simply be “taken from the real world”.
  • Deciding what language is appropriate is difficult without insider knowledge of the specific company or context. Teachers may make pronouncements about correctness based on their own general knowledge, but these might be misleading or even completely wrong when taken in context.
  • Linguacultural competence (see Peltonen and Hu (2025) for detailed discussion) is critical.

 

These findings present a significant challenge for ESP practitioners: how do we prepare learners when language use in the workplace is fluid and varies so widely? Learning a “standard” model or fixed set of phrases is often ineffective. Research suggests that much of this learning happens informally, often within communities of practice on the job, rather than solely in formal classroom settings.

Corporate Language Training

The corporate training industry is vast, and language training is a relatively small part of it, alongside areas like sales, leadership, and compliance training. A major trend in corporate training is the shift away from formal courses towards more informal, self-directed, and on-the-job learning, potentially impacting the way companies think about traditional language training.

Five case studies illustrated diverse approaches to developing corporate language training materials:

  1. Writing for a language school: This example involved supplementing general BE materials already available to teachers by creating highly context-specific materials using company documents, focusing on task-based learning and role plays of real tasks. One example was materials on the language of metalworking for software developers tasked with an IT project at a steel plant, emphasizing that ESP in corporate contexts tends to be specific to situations, not just general professions or roles.
  2. Writing for a publisher: We looked at developing bespoke materials for an automotive client involving desktop research and building a relevant language corpus. This showed that general CEFR influenced vocabulary “levels” (e.g. English Profile) are often irrelevant; lexis is determined by the specific context.
  3. Writing for a multinational company’s training department: This meant supplementing published coursebooks with bespoke, in-house, and updatable materials. Techniques such as “white labelling” allowed core activities to be rebranded for different departments and customized according to specific contexts. Like all corporate training materials, such activities require expert insider checks, piloting, revisions, and detailed teacher guidelines, as teachers might be unfamiliar with the company’s specific context.
  4. Writing for an e-learning company: Here the goal was developing a tailor-made sales training product, to be delivered using microlearning and gamification. The primary objective was increasing sales, not teaching English. Insight was gained by observing real sales interactions, highlighting the value of onsite needs analysis. This project involved prototyping initial modules due to its bespoke nature.
  5. Working for an intergovernmental organization (maritime industry): This involved creating general and role-specific maritime English books: examples from the general coursebooks focused on topics such as intercultural communication (“harmonized communication”) and safety culture. Examples from more role-specific materials included logbook entries, radio conversations, as well as accident analysis tasks which required insider knowledge and professional expertise from seafarers to complete.
 

These five case studies demonstrated that writing corporate materials can mean working with a wide range of client types and needs, a lack of a standard approach, and intense collaboration with expert insiders. Materials are based on analysing the client’s workplace discourse alongside their specific business needs. It is difficult to judge just how widespread corporate language training materials are. I argued they can be found in many companies around the world, although there is no public data as access is typically granted to insiders only.

The role of AI in corporate language training materials is emerging but faces challenges. Training Large Language Models (LLMs) to produce precise, company-specific language is difficult due to a lack of access to proprietary discourse data. AI also has issues with hallucination, sycophancy and bias. However, when large, specific corpora (e.g., recorded ship-to-shore conversations) are available, AI can generate highly accurate, context-specific materials.

To sum up, in this talk I tried to deconstruct BELF and show that while we know a lot about how English is used, we know very little about how people become BELF users and learn in the workplace (e.g. informal learning, peer coaching, on-the-job learning). This is a promising area for research. For corporate language training, my main message was that there is so much potential outside the traditional ELT bubble, but that we need to be prepared to move outside our comfort zones.

Q&A

During the Q&A, John Hughes made the point that there are very few new BE coursebooks. I suggested that BELF research and the growing popularity of AI might be signalling the decline of traditional coursebooks, especially in paper format.

Sandy Millin raised another good point about pre-experienced learners. While they are a significant part of “business English”, they are a completely different world from people already working in companies. This talk focused solely on training people who are already in companies. I believe teachers working with such learners still need to know about how English is used in the international workplace and I pointed out that most ELT teacher training certificates seem to largely ignore this area of language. How many ELT teacher training courses require teachers to observe real workplace interactions, or analyse workplace discourse, for example?

John Hughes then followed up on whether the issue is materials related, or teacher training related, and asked if the solution might lie in BELF teacher training courses. I argued that we are not anywhere close to providing such courses. I also noted that many successful professionals in the corporate language training industry come from very different backgrounds to the traditional CELTA/ DELTA/ TESOL masters routes common in the ELT industry.

References

Kankaanranta, A., Louhiala-Salminen, L. & Karhunen, P. (2015). English in multinational companies: implications for teaching “English” at an international business school. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(1), 125–148. 

Peltonen, L., & Hu, G. (2025). Addressing linguacultural competencies in business English pedagogy. ELT Journal [online first]. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccaf017

Evan Frendo has been involved in ESP and business English teaching since 1993, primarily within the corporate sector. Based in Berlin, Germany, he divides his time between training, writing, and consulting, travelling widely to work with clients in different parts of the world. He also speaks regularly at conferences and other ELT events, and was the opening plenary speaker at the 2023 IATEFL Conference in Harrogate. He has considerable experience in creating corporate in-house training materials, managing teams of up to 20 writers, and has also authored several coursebooks and methodology books. The latter include “How to Teach Business English” (Pearson, 2005), a staple in business English teacher training courses. His recent projects include training and consulting for the maritime industry, lecturing on the ESP module of the University of Malta’s MA TESOL programme, and developing in-house materials for corporate clients. An ex-IATEFL trustee and two-time BESIG coordinator, he is currently serving as an IATEFL ambassador. Please visit www.e4b.de to find out more.