The End of Traditional ELT: Why Teachers Must Unlearn Everything - Evan Frendo

About this episode

Evan Frendo discusses the need for English language teachers to adapt to changes in the corporate world and the impact of AI on traditional teaching methods.

"We’ve got to have a very hard look at ourselves and stop calling ourselves experts just because we have a Master's from 10 or 15 years ago. Those times are over, and we’ve really got to focus on what added value we can bring that AI can’t." We sit down with BELF trainer Evan Frendo. Evan Frendo is a freelance trainer and consultant based in Berlin, Germany. He has been active in corporate language and communications training since 1993, and specializes in the fields of ESP and business English. A frequent speaker at conferences, he also travels regularly in Europe and Asia to run courses or to work as a consultant. In this episode, we chat about: Why sticking to the syllabus is the fastest way to become irrelevant in the corporate world Why we need to stop teaching "English" and start teaching English as a Business Lingua Franca (BELF) Why finding your specialty is 90% luck and 10% being the only person in the room who can stand up in front of a PowerPoint How AI is killing traditional needs analysis and why your learners are now their own content creators Why the best "business English" happens the moment the teacher leaves the room Why being "safe in the harbour" is the most…

People in this episode

Guest: Evan Frendo

Topics covered

• traditional ELT
• Business English
• AI in education
• corporate language training
• teacher development

Keywords

• English as a Business Lingua Franca
• corporate training
• ESP
• needs analysis
• teacher relevance

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: We Are English Teachers

Places: Berlin, Germany

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