With over a billion users around the world, the English language is regarded as one of the most widely used languages in the world. The majority of English-speaking people speak the language as their first or second language, while the rest as a third or fourth.
Education First (EF), an international education company has recently published its EF English Proficiency Index (EPI) which ranks the English proficiency of 100 countries. EF specializes in language training, educational travel, academic degree programs, and cultural exchange.
The Index is based on test data from more than 2.3 million test takers around the world who took the EF Standard English Test (EF SET) or one of their English placement tests in the year 2018. The EPI places the surveyed countries into five proficiency bands, from Very High to Very Low.
So … how are the countries performing?
According to the report by Education First, Northern Europeans are the most fluent with the Netherlands tops the rankings, while Middle Easterners are the least proficient. Malaysia is categorized as “High Proficient”, ranked 26th out of the 100 countries surveyed. Most ASEAN countries are ranked lower than Malaysia, except Singapore (5th) and the Philippines (20th).
The overall English proficiency in Asia declined slightly compared to last year, with more than 50% of the countries surveyed registering a drop in score. China (40th), as one of the countries with the largest sample size, has improved over the past decade, moving from “Low Proficiency” to “Moderate Proficiency” for the first time, since the inception of first EPI.
Does it tell anything besides English Proficiency?
In addition to the country’s level English proficiency, the EPI 2019 has identified some other common trends which are quite interesting:
English and innovation go
hand in hand
English has been the principal language in international collaborations. In the previous version of EPI, it was identified that English showed a correlation with various measures of investment in R&D. English-speaking teams are able to attract more diverse talent and access ideas from around the world.
Countries with high English
proficiency are fairer and more open
English, as a medium of international connectivity, has showed an increasing correlation between a society’s connectedness to the world and the level of social and political equality experienced by its citizens.
Technology spreads English
Technology-enabled distance education could one day
allow anyone to learn English, wherever they are. There is a consistent
correlation between English proficiency and measures of technology adoptions,
such as secure servers per capita, ICT exports, and broadband subscriptions.
Adult in their late 20s speak the best English
It was also identified that the adults aged 20 to 26 have the strongest English skills, followed by adults aged 21 to 25. This indicates the growing prominence of English instruction in university education around the world. It also suggests that on-the-job English practice and often some formal training are building English proficiency early in adults’ careers.
Managers speak the most
English
Worldwide, there is a gap of more than three points between the English proficiency scores of managers and those of their colleagues in executive and staff positions. Managers interact with their colleagues and clients overseas more regularly than junior staff, so they get more practice speaking English.
Written by Ivan Yee, Principal Consultant at 27 Advisory
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