Mind your language

Market for English training is worth about $7.5 billion in China

China's enthusiasm for studying English is on the rise, but the focus has shifted from exam scores to communication, says president of EF Corporate Solutions Peter Burman.

This change recognizes that students who speak broken English can complete their designated tasks in the workplace. Such acknowledgement is important as business becomes increasingly global and more English speakers are needed in China.

"Students' skills are measured in their ability to do practical tasks, like writing an e-mail or making a phone call. This concept is important especially for Chinese students who have traditionally found it very difficult to communicate in English in real life, despite their high scores in exams", Burman says.

He says it is this approach and its business-oriented corporate culture that gives EF an edge in the Chinese market. With a 20-year presence in China, EF has 8,000 employees in the country working across 200 schools.

"The global education industry has changed tremendously in the past 20 years, but we welcome the fact that today you are no better than what your students say about you," Burman says.

Around 10 years ago the firm made a strategic shift from marketing and advertising, toward heavy investment in research and development on new learning methods, especially ones supported by technology and Internet platforms.

The results have been significant. In China the proportion of students learning at EF's classrooms compared to online has moved from 80-to-20, to 20-to-80, as technology has improved the availability of teachers and access from the student perspective.

Technology developed by the EF team allows students to tailor and personalize their learning by inputting their needs into a computer system.

Technology has also helped EF to champion "flipped learning", whereby students learn new concepts at home using the latest technology and then practice what they have learned in class where a teacher is on hand to help.

Swedish entrepreneur Bertil Hult founded EF in 1965. His childhood struggles with dyslexia were his inspiration for EF. After dropping out of school, due in part to his inability to learn English, Hult took a job as an apprentice at a Swedish bank, which subsequently sent him to London.

Only a few months after relocating, Hult could speak English. His time in the UK taught him that "learning by doing" could have an equal, if not greater, impact on educational outcomes as traditional classroom methods.

EF is celebrating its 50th anniversary. It is a privately owned company, owned by the Hult family in Sweden. Globally, it employs 40,000 workers, has worked with more than 1,500 companies and helped more than 15 million students learn a new language.

In the Chinese market, EF serves individual clients, corporate companies and major events. Individual clients range from school students to working adults who want to improve their English as a way of bettering future employment prospects.

At the same time, EF serves many corporate firms such as Air China, the accountancy firm BDO, and the brewery AB InBev.

Burman says EF realized that China was a big market 20 years ago because of its population and opening-up, but that the growth of English learning has really exceeded his team's expectations.

The research firm Ambient Insight reports that China, with a growth rate of 23.6 percent over the past five years, is now the top buying country of digital English language products worldwide. Category revenues in China are expected to triple from $323 million (295 million euros) in 2013 to $932 million by 2018.

China Education Daily reported that as of 2010, more than 400 million Chinese are studying English, accounting for about one-third of China's population. In 2011, the market for English-language training was worth 46.3 billion yuan ($7.5 billion; 1.1 billion euros) according to market data provider Beijing Zhongzhilin Information Technology Ltd.

But at the same time competition is tough. The US-headquartered Wall Street English also has China as its biggest market, with more than 60 centers. Disney English, another US English-learning provider, has rapidly expanded since launching in China in 2008, after thousands of parents signed their toddlers up for its special curriculum of Disney-themed classes.

Years of working in China have made Burman realize that Chinese students have a real drive and motivation to learn English, and that they are hard working. "Chinese students are very diligent. They tend to follow the programs and are self-motivated. If they join a program they are more likely to see it to the end, compared with the global average."

Over the past 10 years he has also noticed a shift in EF's corporate customers, from a large concentration of multinationals requiring local employees to speak English and being able to communicate with their headquarters, to local Chinese firms wanting to go global.

EF has also provided language training to big events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where volunteers, judges and other people involved in the games were given basic training to provide a better overall welcome for visitors to the city.

He says preparations started around two years prior to the Olympics, although the bulk of the training was delivered in the six months leading up to it.

"We tried very hard to make the content relevant and customized for all the different participants in the Olympics, and what we have found is that it ensures people are highly motivated to learn," he says.

Burman says the firm's first entry into the country, in 1993, was not smooth. Its main challenge was hiring the right people. Many Chinese workers did not want to work for EF because it was a small organization. and so its China team was predominantly managed by expats. But this has changed with EF's growth.

"We have created an EF Chinese culture that is very entrepreneurial. We have attention to detail because all our products are high-tech, and it's a very international environment because our workers feel that they are connected with the world. That it is a good stepping stone for those who want to work abroad," he says.

It is mostly the Chinese who manage EF, and Chinese is the second-largest manager nationality within EF globally, after the US.

He says EF's growth in China has also coincided with changes in the global education industry, where the teacher's role is changing from lecturer to facilitator.

"The classroom environment is now different because being a teacher used to be about knowing where to find the right content to photocopy, and knowing the content to teach in class. But new technology has meant the teacher has more tools to make it fun and relevant for each student."

To keep up with education industry trends EF invests millions of dollars a year in R&D, so it can help students find the most relevant and efficient ways of learning, Burman says.

"This will be our big differentiator as we push into the future of learning. English learning is all about people knowing how to communicate, a lot of it is about doing, and it doesn't help if the teacher tells you what is right," he says.

Burman joined EF in 1996. He wanted to become a professional golfer as a child and, while he was training, he spent some time teaching English, which contributed toward his experience in the education industry. Realizing that he was not going to become a golfer he went to work for the pharmaceutical firm Johnson & Johnson, until one day a friend called him and suggested he join EF.

Being part of the EF team has given him the opportunity to travel around the world and make a difference to people's lives. "It's incredible to work with so many different cultures and see how our programs help students," he says.

cecily.liu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 07/24/2015 page26)