The Rise of Business English as a Lingua Franca: Trends in Business English and Corporate Language Training

By 2030, the global English Language Training (ELT) market is projected to reach $129.3 billion, reflecting a 7.5% compound annual growth rate. A key contributor to this growth is the Business English and Corporate Language training sector. English proficiency has become a crucial asset for career success, and as companies expand globally and digitalization accelerates, the demand for tailored, tech-driven, and industry-specific language training solutions is growing.

A growing emphasis on flexibility, industry-specific instruction, and technology-driven learning shapes the landscape of Business English and corporate language training in 2025. Companies are moving away from generic programs, instead tailoring training to specific job functions and industry needs.

AI-powered personalization, mobile learning, and immersive tools are making language acquisition more dynamic and efficient, ensuring employees develop job-ready communication skills in a way that fits their busy schedules.

The integration of cultural competence training and Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF) further enhances professionals’ ability to navigate global business environments.

As the global demand for English language training rises, companies are redefining how they approach Business English instruction. Rather than relying on generic courses, businesses are prioritizing customized, purpose-driven training. This shift brings us to a key question: How does Business English fit within the larger corporate learning ecosystem?

The Intersection of Language Training and Corporate Learning

English serves as the primary global lingua franca, with millions of professionals relying on it for international business communication.

According to Evan Frendo, prolific author, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) specialist, and corporate language trainer, Business English is best thought of as an umbrella term, as it holds different meanings for different people.

“What it doesn’t mean, normally, is that it’s not about a variety of English. There is not an English which is Business English and an English which is not Business English. It’s not as simple as that. These things merge into each other,” he says.

Frendo, who has worked in this space for over thirty years, describes the relationship between Business English and corporate language training as a sort of continuum.

“Business English can be very general, with pre-experienced individuals who haven’t worked in business yet, learning about the language they might have to use, right up to a very focused specific need, perhaps inside some sort of department or corporation,” he says. “And that’s really where Business English then moves into this idea of corporate language training.”

Andreea-Katia Nechifor, Managing Director at Lektor Language Trainer, also speaks to the relationship between Business English and corporate language training.

“I feel that this English is at the intersection of two worlds, the world of English Language Teaching (ELT) and the world of learning and development (L&D). When I’m wearing the ELT hat, I use terms such as task-based learning, grammar, and vocabulary drills. When I’m wearing the L&D hat, I talk about facilitation, coaching, and specific instructions,” she says. “We’re in two boats and we need to find a way to be connected to both worlds.”

Frendo remarks that the biggest difference between Business English in general and corporate language training is who instructors are working with.

“In corporate language training, you’re normally dealing with a client. It’s not B2C (business to customer) it’s B2B (business to business). You’re working with different stakeholders. It’s not quite as simple as just the teacher and the learner – there are other people involved.”

Watch the replay of the Business English and Corporate Language Training Trends in 2025 Expert Series webinar featuring Evan Frendo, Andreea-Katia Nechifor, and Virginia López Grisolía.

Leveraging an Industry-Specific Approach through Targeted Needs Analyses

Given that Business English operates at the intersection of language instruction and corporate development, the next logical step is ensuring training meets specific business needs. Companies are increasingly moving beyond one-size-fits-all programs to create industry-focused language training solutions tailored to job roles and real-world applications.

Virginia López Grisolía, ESP specialist, teacher trainer, and Founder and Director of Studies at Interaction Language Studios, emphasizes the importance of understanding the instructional context to ensure effective delivery.

“When it comes to corporate language teaching, it’s about the needs of a company, a company in a specific industry, and then within that company, the different areas in that company and the different teams,” she says, highlighting the crucial role that needs analyses hold in these different settings.

In the healthcare sector, medical professionals improve their English skills for patient communication and documentation, ensuring accurate and effective interactions with English-speaking patients. Technology companies train IT specialists in industry-specific terminology to facilitate seamless collaboration with global partners. Meanwhile, finance professionals enhance their communication skills for international transactions, ensuring clarity in financial reporting and negotiations.

Frendo expresses some concern over how large online schools are selling their products without truly understanding the needs of the clients they’re working with.

“Now, they may be calling it tailor-made and they may be calling it flexible and personalized, but it’s not a needs analysis in the sense of you as a coach or as a trainer going into a series of meetings in a department, identifying the critical communication events that are taking place, focusing on where the real priorities are, and then going back and designing the course according to what that particular group needs,” says Frendo.

Frendo recognizes that cost is part of the equation and that thorough needs analyses and truly customized offerings can be expensive for the company; however, the difference in relevance for the individuals participating is worth considering.

There is a significant difference between conducting a needs analysis that results in general Business English, deeming it necessary to cover topics like presentation skills and negotiation skills and one that examines language specific to a particular community of practice.

“Every group of people, when they come together and work together, use language in a certain way, so that it becomes in some ways unique to that particular group,” says Frendo.

Part of the role of a trainer in a company setting is to enter these situations and understand how language is being used.

“Teachers go into these situations, work with the language, do the conversation analysis, understand what’s going on, focus on what needs to be done, and focus on what can be done,” says Frendo. “In other words, you won’t be able to fix every problem in the world, but through collaborating with various stakeholders, it is possible to produce something which is actually going to meet the needs of that particular group.”

By addressing the unique linguistic needs of each industry, companies can ensure employees acquire practical and applicable language skills. Industry-focused programs incorporate activities that mirror real-world challenges professionals face in their respective fields.

No matter the industry, López Grisolía emphasizes that Business English is about “helping learners to do their job in English and to build rapport with their colleagues and clients. Communication is what counts.”

She notes that it’s important for instructors to understand what is driving investment, adding that “companies will pay for a language training program not for the learners to become proficient, but to make money for the company through doing their jobs.”

What exactly is a needs assessment for teaching English? Find out in this post.

The Rise of Business English as the Lingua Franca (BELF)

While industry-specific training ensures that employees learn relevant vocabulary and skills, an equally important consideration is the global nature of today’s workforce. As companies expand internationally, their employees interact more frequently with non-native English speakers than with native speakers – bringing us to the rise of Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF).

López Grisolía encourages us to reflect on the evolution of language use and instruction. “EFL is learning English to communicate with native speakers. This is the old paradigm. Of course, this is changing not only in Business English, but in ELT in general, and has been changing for more than 20 years now.”

As of 2025, there are approximately 1.52 billion English speakers worldwide, including both native and non-native speakers. Of this total, about 370-400 million are native speakers, while the remaining 1.1-1.15 billion are non-native speakers who use English as a second or foreign language.

The prevalence of non-native English speakers highlights the language’s status as a global lingua franca, used for international communication, business, science, and diplomacy. This widespread use of English as an additional language has led to a situation where non-native speakers outnumber native speakers by a significant margin.

“This amounts to saying that in just one out of four conversations, you will be speaking to a native speaker. The rest will take place between people whose first language is not English. The vast majority of English interactions today occur among non-native speakers of English,” says López Grisolía.

With this in mind, instructors need to consider how they’re preparing learners to interact with other multilingual individuals.

“In the workplace, our learners come from different mother tongues, and they will bring with them their own multilingual resources,” says López Grisolía. “It’s a medium of communication which is dynamic, it’s hybrid, it’s highly variable, different from native speaker English.”

This all has implications on what trainers teach, along with how much emphasis is placed on grammar or accuracy.  “The idea is to prioritize communicative strategies over accuracy, to devote more time to clarification and paraphrasing strategies. Focus more on pragmatics.”

A shift is also required when it comes to pronunciation instruction. “BELF is not tied up in native speaker norms. When it comes to pronunciation, the aim is not for the users of the language to become native-like, but rather to be intelligible.”

López Grisolía reminds us that what has been important in different instructional contexts may not take precedence in corporate language environments. “I’ve taught English grammar for almost three decades, but when I’m teaching Business English, grammar may not be a priority. I teach language which is specific to the industry.”

Being thoughtful in material and activity selection is a critical component of adopting the BELF mindset. López Grisolía recommends leveraging authentic materials and creating learning environments and activities that are as close as possible to users’ daily activities at work.

“Use case studies, role plays, and simulations. The idea is to establish some kind of partnership with the learners so they bring materials to the class.” She recommends using real emails, meetings, and presentations so that the instruction is as relevant as possible for the target audience.

Effective BELF-oriented training also recognizes the importance of exposing learners of English to different varieties of the language beyond “standard” English historically championed in ELT. TED Talks, podcasts, and other forms of multimedia can aid in training learners’ ears and supporting communication for multilingual users.

As businesses operate in diverse markets, cultural intelligence has also become a core component of corporate language programs. Employees learn how to navigate cross-cultural communication by understanding etiquette differences across regions. Idiomatic and context-specific language use is also emphasized, helping employees adjust their communication styles based on cultural expectations.

López Grisolía highlights the role of intercultural competence in this environment. “These huge global teams have members from different nationalities and different language backgrounds. When professionals communicate in English as a lingua franca, the main aim is not to display their language abilities. It’s not about proficiency – it’s about doing their business.”

Explore the many reasons why intelligibility matters more than perfection in business English communication.

Skill-Based Approach & Soft-Skill Integration

Because Business English today is more about intelligibility than native-like accuracy, employees must develop communication strategies that go beyond grammar and vocabulary. Companies are therefore integrating skill-based training that emphasizes clarity, negotiation, and interpersonal effectiveness in multilingual environments.

Corporate language training is shifting toward a competency-driven model where employees focus on mastering specific language skills relevant to their job functions. Presentation and negotiation skills are among the most sought-after competencies, as professionals need to convey ideas persuasively in high-stakes meetings. Similarly, technical writing and documentation training ensures that professionals can draft clear, concise reports, proposals, and internal communications.

Client-facing communication is another critical area, as employees must build strong relationships with customers and partners through effective verbal and written interactions. The shift toward a skills-based approach means that training programs are no longer generalized but instead tailored to help employees develop job-ready communication abilities aligned with business objectives.

Beyond technical and intercultural communicative competence, language training emphasizes interpersonal skills to prepare employees for complex business interactions. Active listening and clarity in speech enhance comprehension and response accuracy, ensuring that professionals communicate effectively online and in the board room. Conflict resolution and persuasion skills are also key components, helping employees navigate challenging business conversations diplomatically.

Additionally, emotional intelligence and adaptability training strengthen resilience in international workplaces, ensuring professionals can work efficiently in culturally diverse environments. These soft skills are essential for leadership development and effective teamwork in global business settings. More corporate language providers are catching onto this need and building soft skill training into language programming.

Discover how to prepare business English students for career success and employability with 21st-century skills, also known as soft skills.

The Role of Incidental Learning

Yet, no matter how well a language course is designed, professionals often learn best not in classrooms, but on the job. Incidental learning – the acquisition of language through real-world exposure – is playing an increasingly crucial role in corporate training.

While options for corporate language training continue to grow, it is worth examining how learners are actually engaging with the language. Frendo shares a reflection from his tenure as a full-time in-house trainer in a large multinational company.

“One of the lessons I learned very quickly is how people best learned the English they needed for their job. Surprise, surprise – it wasn’t in my classroom. It wasn’t when people came to my room to learn English with me. It was when they were going to meetings, when they were going to conferences, when they were doing their business trips, and so on.”

He adds that some of the best people he worked with learned on the job.

“This has been a huge change in the way people and companies are learning English. More and more now, incidental learning or informal learning – learning which is not formally structured by the language trainer or the language training department – is done by interacting with their peers, interacting with their colleagues, and learning by using.”

This observation harkens back to language learning methodology and more specifically, task-based learning. “It’s about doing the task, doing what you need to do in English, and then perhaps in an ideal situation, getting some coaching or feedback.”

Having learners operate in the language to complete job-specific tasks calls for a revised role for the instructor. “The teacher still has a useful role to play, but it’s no longer just about sitting in a classroom as the expert. Instead of being in a room where no one has ever experienced one of these meetings, the teacher is now attending the meetings, sitting on the side, acting as a coach – giving feedback and helping people improve in context.”

Frendo elaborates that people are learning from a variety of sources, not just the English teacher. “I think as trainers, we’re moving away from this idea of organizing courses formally, and much more towards a new role of curating, and making different resources accessible to our learners.”

“The traditional instruction in this sense, will go away, I think, and we’re moving much more towards informal learning, backed up by all these wonderful new tools that are coming in, like AI,” he adds.

Learn how to hyper-personalize your business English teaching with AI.

Virtual and Hybrid Learning

Recognizing that much of corporate language learning happens outside formal training sessions, companies are turning to flexible, technology-driven solutions. Virtual and hybrid learning models provide employees with structured opportunities to reinforce their skills while accommodating busy work schedules.

The rise of remote and hybrid work environments has significantly impacted corporate language training. Companies are integrating virtual learning platforms with traditional classroom approaches, creating blended learning models that maximize engagement and flexibility.

Employees can join live virtual classes for real-time interaction with instructors and peers while also accessing self-paced modules that allow them to review and practice at their own convenience. This combination ensures that training is both interactive and adaptable to employees’ busy schedules.

Cloud-based training solutions are also gaining traction, providing businesses with scalable programs that ensure consistent language training across global offices. These platforms store learning materials, track progress, and facilitate communication between instructors and learners, making it easier to manage training at an organizational level. Many companies are incorporating interactive webinars and workshops, allowing employees to engage in discussion-based learning sessions that mirror in-person corporate training environments.

Virtual and hybrid learning models offer cost-effective, scalable solutions that cater to the needs of global businesses. These approaches remove geographical barriers, making it easier for multinational teams to receive the same high-quality training regardless of their location.

Companies are also recognizing the need to analyze how learners are learning. In addition to being able to demonstrate incremental growth to HR and department heads, learners in corporate language programs also require scheduling options that accommodate their lives as busy professionals.

Personalized and Adaptive Learning

As companies integrate virtual learning platforms, they are also exploring ways to make these experiences more tailored to individual learners. AI-powered personalization is revolutionizing Business English training by adapting to employees’ specific needs and learning progress. AI-powered platforms analyze learners’ progress, identify skills gaps, and provide customized content to optimize learning efficiency.

Companies are leveraging AI-driven conversational platforms to enhance corporate communication skills, ensuring learners receive real-time feedback and individualized learning paths.

AI-driven chatbots and voice recognition tools provide real-time feedback, allowing learners to refine pronunciation, grammar, and fluency on the spot.

AI is also enabling more contextualized learning experiences, allowing learners to engage with real-life business simulations such as negotiations, team meetings, and customer service interactions. AI-powered tools can simulate business conversations, detect errors in speech, and even suggest more natural ways to express ideas.

One of the major advantages of AI-driven training is enhanced learning efficiency. AI analyzes user performance, adjusting lesson difficulty based on progress. Instead of following a rigid curriculum, learners receive materials tailored to their evolving needs. This ensures that employees focus on the areas where they need the most improvement, making training more effective.

Customization for users is enabled by competence frameworks such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and Pearson’s Global Scale of English (GSE), which allows learners to understand their language needs and progress on their learning journey. Detailed learning objectives can support instructional input and facilitate progress monitoring and reporting to managers and L&D personnel.

See how Bridge Corporate Language Training is enhancing Business English courses with FLOW Speak, an AI-powered voice technology app.

Mobile Learning and Microlearning Solutions

AI-driven platforms are making it easier to deliver personalized content, but for many professionals, long training sessions remain impractical. Mobile learning and microlearning solutions address this challenge by offering short, engaging lessons that fit into a busy workday.

Mobile learning (m-learning) and microlearning have emerged as key trends, allowing employees to engage with short, structured lessons during breaks or commutes. These bite-sized modules provide high retention rates and can be seamlessly integrated into corporate workflows.

Nechifor reflects on the need to adjust instructional models.

“I must admit a lot has changed since I first began teaching Business English 15 years ago. First and foremost people have less physical time to join classes. Sessions used to be 120 minutes, then 100 minutes, then 90 minutes, then 50, then 45,” she says, also noting that people have shorter attention spans nowadays.

“And then you will compete with all these alternatives like AI tutors, online tutors, and language learning apps. It’s difficult, so we had to come up with solutions.”

Unlike traditional training programs that require hours of commitment, microlearning delivers information in digestible, focused sessions. This approach is highly effective because it allows learners to absorb new information gradually without feeling overwhelmed. For example, a five-minute lesson on business email etiquette or a quick pronunciation drill can easily fit into a professional’s day without disrupting productivity.

Microlearning opportunities, or micro-practice opportunities, as Nechifor calls them, “ensure that given the shorter instruction time learners have, they get something in between classes because 45 minutes a week won’t work wonders for anyone.”

Companies are also increasingly using gamified learning apps and AI-driven recommendation engines to tailor content to employees’ evolving needs. By incorporating quizzes, leaderboards, and reward systems, these platforms keep learners engaged and motivated. AI-powered notifications remind learners to complete daily exercises, reinforcing continuous learning habits without feeling intrusive.

“We’ve got to mention gamification because video games and social media are so popular nowadays. We had to find a way to integrate these tools to make language learning games,” says Nechifor. “How are we going to keep them there while they’re in class, or their chairs in an online class?”

While gamification, analog or digital, has always had its place in ELT, this mode of instruction has seen an uptick in corporate learning environments in recent years.

Learn how to keep business English students engaged and motivated through micro-scale progress reporting.

Collaborative and Social Learning

While microlearning enables independent study, language is inherently social. Companies are increasingly integrating collaborative and social learning experiences to reinforce Business English training through peer interaction and real-world practice.

Corporate language training is increasingly incorporating peer-to-peer learning environments, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange. Discussion forums and online communities enable employees to share experiences, language tips, and best practices. Group projects and peer reviews help reinforce learning through active engagement, while company-wide learning challenges encourage motivation through friendly competition.

Social learning fosters continuous language development while reinforcing business communication strategies. When employees learn from their peers, they gain diverse perspectives and insights that enhance their understanding of Business English in different professional contexts.

Conclusion

The evolution of Business English training is shaped by technology, industry needs, and global communication trends. From AI-driven personalization to collaborative learning, the landscape continues to shift toward more relevant, flexible, and engaging language training solutions. As we look ahead, innovation in corporate language training will remain essential for preparing professionals to succeed in an interconnected world.

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