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English proficiency index 54 countries | ||
Tags: Language Map/Atlas | English | ||
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| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4485 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 1 of 15 08 February 2013 at 9:45am | IP Logged | ||
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The private educational company Education First (EF) has published an English Proficiency Index, which is intersting reading. It benchmarks English proficiency in 54 countries and rank them from very high to very low proficiency.
It is maybe not surprising that the top five are four Nordic countries and the Netherlands, with Sweden in the number one spot. However, I found it more surprising that Spain ranks above Portugal and France, or that India, where English is an official language, only ranks as number 14, below countries like Belgium, Austria and Hungary. In the category "very low proficiency" you basically find Latin American and Arab countries. Admittedly the results must be taken with a grain of salt. As the report itself states: "We recognize that the test-taking population represented in this index is self-selected and not guaranteed to be representative of the country as a whole. Only those people either wanting to learn English or curious about their English skills will participate in one of these tests. This would tend to skew scores lower than for the general population,since those who are confident in English are unlikely to pursue English lessons." 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4468 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 2 of 15 08 February 2013 at 9:53am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm surprised to see Hungary described as having high proficiency.
Outside of Budapest, English speakers are thin on the ground. There are some areas of the country where German is a far better bet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6549 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 15 08 February 2013 at 10:37am | IP Logged | ||
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The report also states that its test are taken at a computer. OK, who has access to a computer in a poor country? Probably the one who is likely to know some English already because English is so pervasive on the internet, and because children of rich people are more likely to get both a computer and a good education which includes English. I can't see exactly how the report authors deal with this problem, but it would tend to favor rich countries.
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| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4485 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 4 of 15 08 February 2013 at 10:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Iversen, that is a point. However, one could also interpret it differently. If, as you say, mostly rich people who already know some English are more likely to take the test in poor countries, then the scores for those countries would probably be better than the actual level of English for the whole population.
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4902 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 5 of 15 08 February 2013 at 11:05am | IP Logged | ||
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How can they estimate this level of proficiency becides self-reporting?
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| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4503 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 15 08 February 2013 at 11:20am | IP Logged | ||
I find the logic of this statement wrong. It doesn't say anything about general population. The error margin goes in both directions - the people confident about their English won't take the test but at the same time, the people lacking English skills won't take the test either. The minimum number of test takers was 400 per country. I haven't found any information about the real number. How this could be representative? You cannot choose 400 English learners in Prague, preferably at higher advanced level, give them the test and say that people in Czech republic are very proficient in English based on their results. There are even big towns here in South Bohemia, where you would have problems with English beyond basics. The most used second language here is still German, with few exceptions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5227 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 15 08 February 2013 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, it should be the opposite -- if people of poor countries who have access to computers should also have access to a better education, then they should be doing better, on average, than people in richer countries where even the relatively poor would have access to computers. Yet, the poorer countries (ie. the rich people who could afford to take the test) didn't do too well compared to the less rich test-takers in richer countries. [I now see Ogrim has made the same point.] Edited by Arekkusu on 08 February 2013 at 3:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6225 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 15 08 February 2013 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I lost patience trying to figure out what methodology they used so I don't understand how Singapore can be ranked so low. It makes no sense.
EDIT: OK, I found a discussion of the test on page 37. Regarding why Singapore and Malaysia do so poorly it seems that they are measuring non-native speakers. Why they decided to do this I have no idea. It doesn't make sense to rank English ability in these countries ignoring that most speakers are perfectly functionally fluent in English. Edited by newyorkeric on 08 February 2013 at 3:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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