English Language Teaching (ELT) is the professional and academic field concerned with teaching English to speakers of other languages. It comprises the methodology, materials, assessment, teacher education, and institutional infrastructure surrounding non-native English instruction across primary, secondary, tertiary, and adult settings worldwide. ELT is one major application area of applied linguistics without being reducible to it: classroom craft, materials design, and curriculum decisions involve professional judgements that no research finding alone determines.
The field divides by learner context and purpose:
The ESL/EFL distinction has become contested as English use globalises: many learners in nominally EFL countries now use English daily online, in workplaces, and in higher education, blurring the categorical line.
ELT methodology has cycled through identifiable approaches: grammar-translation (19th century), the direct method (early 20th), audiolingualism (mid-20th), the communicative turn (CLT, from the 1970s), task-based language teaching (from the 1980s), the lexical approach (1990s), and the more eclectic, principled-pluralist orientation that has dominated since. Most contemporary classroom practice draws on multiple traditions rather than committing to a single named approach.
ELT is also a global industry. Major publishers (Cambridge, Oxford, Pearson, Macmillan, National Geographic), examination boards (Cambridge Assessment, IDP/British Council/Cambridge for IELTS, ETS for TOEFL), and teacher-training providers (CELTA, Trinity CertTESOL, DELTA) constitute the institutional spine of the field. The economic scale shapes which methodologies become entrenched, which materials reach learners, and which qualifications gatekeep teacher employment.