1.4.2　The profit-making English language schools in China

Due to the exam-oriented education system and the practical need of English proficiency in workplaces，the market of English teaching in China has attracted an overwhelming population of clients including school children，teenagers，college students，adult learners such as white collar employees，and companies.This huge potential of profit attracts organizations of various sizes to invest in the ESL teaching services.Through the last two decades of fast development and increasingly fierce competition，now the market of English teaching in China has entered the phase of maturation.This maturity is shown by the following facts.

（1）Several large-size local corporations have won prestigious status in the competition and taken up a large percentage of the market share.A few magnates like XDF have established a solid foundation and successful image in this industry which is shown in its going public on American stock market in 2006.They have opened a large number of teaching centers across China.Taking the XDF in Beijing for instance，it had 20 branches and campuses across all parts of Beijing till the end of 2008 when the data were collected.（It has further developed into 32 campuses in 2018 when the book was published.）The dominance of the ESL teaching market by these magnates is further enhanced by their advertising.

（2）Medium and small-sized corporations have to seek hard for the originality of their selling point to survive.In the attempt to seize the remaining space in this big market，they advocate various advantages that the big companies don't have，such as the convenience of location access and the specialty in one finer category of the service.

（3）A further evidence of the lucrative nature of the EFL teaching service and the developed market is the fact that foreign capital enters the market in the form of transnational corporations.The foreign companies have both strong financial foundation and inherent advantages in ESL teaching due to the special nature of the service.The foreign-related resources such as teachers，teaching materials，teaching methods and learning environment are their main attraction deployed in their advertising.

（4）The market is becoming more and more finely stratified and differentiated.The whole ESL teaching industry has been broken down to finer sub-industries，among which the most common categories include young children programs，exam-oriented courses for young adults who want to study abroad，and business English for white-collar employees.These competing English language schools vary in their target clients and strategies of operation.Some of them set as their target only one category of the English teaching industry and develop accordingly a package of services and courses.But more companies adopt the strategy of“one emphasis plus plural non-emphasis points”.That is，while they place emphasis on one aspect of the English teaching industry or one teaching program，they also provide courses in other programs in an attempt to satisfy the needs of a larger group of clients.