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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
When we really liked some movie, we tended to geek out by picking up phrases from them and repeat them with friends. It helped in picking up words that "these are not the droids you are looking for" etc. were not dubbed.
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.
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.
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.
