Ukraine took the unenviable place in the ranking.
Private education company EducationFirst (EF) has published the results of its annual study of the level of knowledge of the English language in 80 countries. Ukraine is in the middle of the list, finishing in 47th place, and the level of knowledge of English in our country is assessed as “low”.
The source data are the results of the test EFSET (EF StandardEnglishTest), which can be heard on the website of the company – last year this opportunity was used by about 1 million people.
Of course, estimates of EF are not sociologically accurate, but some idea of the practical command of English in a particular country they give.
Europe is traditionally the leading country among continents in the level of English proficiency. Followed by Asia. Among the countries for the second consecutive year to lead the Netherlands and Laos this year closes the list.
Overall in Europe, marked the highest average for any English region. The reasons are many. For example, students often necessarily learn English as a foreign language, starting in primary school. It is also important that the citizens of these countries are more likely to meet English-speaking people than in other regions.
However, the report stressed that the average level of language skills in Europe in recent years has not changed, and in many places the level of English is too low to use it effectively in the workplace. The growth of popularity of nationalist politicians and ideas can affect how much effort European countries will make the study of English in the future.
High dynamics was demonstrated in Singapore. This is largely due to existing system of language learning, where little of the traditional learning and lots of practice. It is noted that the evaluation of the test from Singapore is quite smooth, while in other countries the variation is very large.
Last year was the first when EF had sufficient information to assess the level of English in Africa.
In General, the continent was below average for the world, but higher than Latin America and the middle East. For historical reasons, a very high level of knowledge of English in South Africa. Africa was the only continent where scores of women were higher on average than men.
Argentina is the only South American country with “very high” rating, but the level of English there were lower than last year. The report EF said that teachers in Latin America often do not speak English.
In the middle East, English is still difficult for rating the UAE, the regional language of the leader (57th place in the world from 80 countries), is assessed as “low”, all other countries it is very low. However, over the last 12 months, almost all countries improved, and Saudi Arabia has the highest growth index EF among all the countries studied.
EF researchers noted that there is a clear dependence of the level of knowledge of the English language in the country of the number of years that a student spends in public schools. The level of English language proficiency is associated with innovation and economic development. Countries with the best Internet connections, investment in research and exports of services have a higher level of knowledge of the English language. In addition, the higher a country’s human development Index HDI, the higher there level of English proficiency. The UN uses the HDI to assess the quality of life in the country, it depends on life expectancy, education and income per capita.
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