
English Proficiency Index - happyscrappy
http://www.ef.com/epi
======
nrinaudo
I must admit I'm surprised at some of these results. Being French with
Japanese in-laws, I've had ample opportunity to compare both populations'
level of english and while French people are by no mean excellent, I found
that it was rare for Japanese people to speak _any_ english. Is my experience
truly that different from real life?

~~~
adwf
If I had to guess, I'd put it down to whereabouts in France you live. If
you're in the south, it is probably more advantageous to learn Spanish or
Italian as your first foreign language. Likewise German in the east/southeast.

Whereas Japan is really only focusing on English with something like 8 years
of mandatory education now.

I'd also call into question the methodology used in determining competence in
this study. I've found that French people will tend to have much better
conversational English as the languages are quite similiar, whereas Japanese
people can be quite shy and hesitant. If this study is conducted as a written
test however, you could easily find the Japanese taking the lead.

~~~
henderson101
France - the French have a very long history of feeling that the French
language has a prestige status in the world. English is now a fairly large
force in the world, but it wasn't always. Whether French is still a
prestige/world language or not now, the French are incredibly proud of their
language. The incentive to learn English, one of their languages largest
competitors, is just not there.

~~~
nrinaudo
I do not feel the last part of your statement is at all true. France is
absolutely proud and protective of its language, but is trying _very_ hard to
teach English to its population.

France has mandatory English lessons. 7 years when I was going through my
education, but I believe it's closer to 10 now - I know you can start English
lessons at 8 but am not sure whether you _have_ to.

Additionally, when I was going through higher education, it was next to
impossible to avoid English lessons - that's easily another 3 to 5 years.

Put together, 20 years ago, I went through _11 years_ of English lessons
through a fairly standard cursus, 7 of which mandatory. And as I said, it's
gotten better (or worse, depending on your point of view) since then.

I'm not pretending that most French people have excellent English skills, but
I do feel it's unfair to paint France as dragging its feet when it comes to
learning foreign languages, English in particular.

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spindritf
I don't understand their methodology or what those numbers really mean.
Anyway, you can take the test, supposedly in under an hour, here
[https://www.efset.org/en](https://www.efset.org/en)

Yes, it's under an hour: 2x25 minutes with an optional break. For some reason
they ask for a phone number later. It might have been optional. Spam is opt-
out though so beware.

~~~
andreasvc
I gave the phone number "0".

------
V-2
It's interesting to confront the data with
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-
sp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-
speaking_population)

European ranking according to EF EPI vs. percent of English speakers according
to Wiki

(No particular reason for filtering it down to just the European table - I
simply happened to start like so and only realized it after a while)

VERY HIGH PROFICIENCY 1\. Sweden (86%) 2\. Norway (nd) 3\. Netherlands (90%)
4\. Estonia (50%) 5\. Denmark (86%) 6\. Austria (73%) 7\. Finland (70%)

HIGH PROFICIENCY 8\. Poland (33%) 9\. Hungary (20%) 10\. Slovenia (59%) 11\.
Belgium (59%) 14\. Germany (64%) 15\. Latvia (46%) 16\. Switzerland (61%) 17\.
Portugal (27%)

MODERATE PROFICIENCY 18\. Slovakia (26%) 20\. Czech Republic (27%) [...]

Clear anomalies are the post-communist countries such as Poland and Hungary.
Personally I was surprised seeing my home country (Poland) rank that high.
Good command of English is relatively rare, especially among older generations
who typically did not learn English at school, and up to this day it is taught
badly (in my opinion).

~~~
tnb234
Having spent 6 months in Poland I have to say I'm a bit surprised by this too.
In my experience a lot of Polish people still have issues with english.

~~~
V-2
Most people who speak fluent English learned it out of their own initiative,
outside of school, by attending courses or taking private lessons. Not
everybody's parents could afford paying for it, though.

English at school isn't taught properly as I said, or at least it wasn't back
in the 90s (I was born in 1981). I suppose things must have improved since
then, but not radically.

Most English teachers were requalified Russian teachers back then, since
Russian used to be a compulsory subject under communist regime and they'd be
out of work had they not switched to English. There were hardly any qualified
English teachers, so, no competition for the job.

You can imagine the outcome. What's more, the didactic method was terribly
obsolete. As early as in primary school we would have to memorize loads of
grammar rules for past perfect continuous and whatnot, while lacking the most
basic vocabulary.

Older generation (+40 yo) never even had that, and living behind the iron
curtain one did not have a strong incentive to learn English in the first
place.

------
jisaacstone
I agree with the other commentors that the samples must be non-random in some
way. Italy and China being in the same bucket ought to give it away.

I'm certain this is just the proficiency of people who happened to take their
test and therefore is completely meaningless.

------
andreasvc
Austria in the list of very high proficiency countries is surprising to me.
The other countries in that list speak a small language which explains the
reliance on a second language.

~~~
rjsw
Austria has a lot of jobs in tourism.

The position of the Netherlands on the list is easy to understand, foreign TV
programmes are subtitled not dubbed.

~~~
andreasvc
Italy and Greece most likely rely on tourism to a greater extent, and speak
languages not spoken in other countries, so based on that one might expect
them to have a higher position than Austria.

Subtitles might help some but putting effort into actively learning a language
is more important; I've seen many subtitled French, Italian and German movies,
but I haven't picked up those languages by osmosis... I wish it were that
easy.

~~~
lambdaphage
Girlfriend's family is from Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium.
Her sister speaks fluent English despite very modest formal language training.
(On the order of the n<=3 years of Spanish or French that most American
students take without much to show for it.) She did, however, watch a lot of
subtitled TV.

There are about 20 million Dutch speakers, vs. perhaps 400 million English
speakers in the US and UK, which have large markets for TV shows and movies
with correspondingly large budgets. For the average Dutch speaker, the
subtitled offerings in English are apparently much richer than the home-grown
stuff.

This, at least, was how it was explained to me by multiple independent Dutch-
speaking Belgians who all had an embarrassingly firm command of idiomatic
English.

------
guard-of-terra
I don't understand what fraction of respective countries' population did they
test. A country with a lot of subjects may get worse results because more
unskilled people try themself / versus a country where English is a rare
skill.

Also note small country preference - no country with more than 10M population
has Very High index.

Anyway, seeing nordic/germanic countries on top is unsurprising.

------
thisjepisje
The Netherlands' history as a trade-based economy forced us to speak both
English and German (and possibly French?) pretty fluently.

------
cottonseed
I really want to visit Estonia. It seems to be in the top of nearly every
positive national ranking I've seen.

------
Alphasite_
One number which really has me is that Singapore's proficiency is only high,
from what I've seen, they have (on the whole) have an excellent grasp of
english.

~~~
xuan
Yes, totally agree. Most of the Singaporeans I know speak English as their
first language. Their standard of written English is arguably higher than that
of Britain due to their strict education system.

------
rkda
The Philippines isn't even on the list.

