Most ELT training starts where teaching ends: with technique. You learn how to stage an activity, elicit vocabulary, correct errors, manage transitions. You study frameworks for engagement, routines for behaviour, digital tools for interaction. The assumption is always the same: if you get the procedure right, the classroom will follow.

I. Heard but not witnessed 11:57 a.m. Thursday. The staffroom fills during the mid-morning break. Sarah sits at the corner table, holding a coffee she hasn't touched. She teaches Business English to corporate clients, mostly intermediate adults. A fellow teacher asks about her lesson.

For over a century, English language teaching has operated on an assumption it has never tested: that teaching is primarily a technical problem. Every major method was built on this assumption. Every major method has failed. Yet the assumption remains untouched.