We’ve changed our name to EF English Live!

There are a few reasons we’ve changed our name to EF English Live. But before we can tell you about those three little words (EF English Live) we have to travel back in time. Here’s the EF English Live story:

Before the Internet existed Bertil Hult (the man who created EF) told a Swedish newspaper he would launch his own satellite to connect every EF English classroom in the world.

Bertil had big dreams. That’s how EF became the largest English language provider in the world. As it turned out, he didn’t need a satellite. The Internet was invented a few years later.

Around the same time a computer science student showed up at Bertil’s door with a revolutionary idea: let’s teach people English with a computer.

It was 1994 and investors were wary. “Nobody will communicate with a computer!” they said. But it was already happening.

That’s why, two years later, EF English Live was launched. Back then, it looked like this:

We’ve had a few facelifts since then. In fact, we’re not like a town anymore. Not at all. We’re more like a school. A real school. Online.

Because we’ve got live, native speaking teachers available 24/7. Plus courses developed by academics, specific English courses for travel, business, TOEFL, TOEIC and more plus award internationally recognized diplomas for every student who completes a unit.

So we changed our name to EF English Live. Because we’re a part of EF, we teach English and we’re live, 24/7.

With fond memories, we wave goodbye to EF Englishtown and with open arms welcome EF English Live. We’re looking forward to many more years of teaching the world English.