Germany has fallen behind Poland and several other neighbours in the race to improve English skills essential for securing cross-border trade. EF’s annual study shows that Germans have superior English skills to Asians or Africans, but this is hardly surprising as natives of those countries speak languages that are almost totally unrelated to English.
But the EF English Proficiency Index also shows that Austria ranks three places higher than Germany in what should be a fair competition. The Scandinavians and Dutch predictably have the highest levels of English, but who would have expected the Polish to achieve sixth place.
For Germans such results are highly significant. As an exporting country, ability in English is key for winning contracts and caring for customers abroad. Although Germans were rated as having a “high” level of proficiency in English, they missed out on joining the 7 countries with a “very high” level, such as Austria, Poland, The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries.
Within Germany, Bavaria ranks 5th amongst the “Länder” and Munich comes 3rd amongst all German cities. Unsurprisingly, the east of Germany has significantly lower levels than in the south and west.
Interestingly, the countries improving most are not those with the highest levels. Denmark, which tops the ranking for proficiency has only seen a score change of +2.72 over the past year, whereas speakers in Turkey have improved their levels by +10.14 on average. Again, Germany is somewhere in the middle with +4.25. Promising for future levels of English in Germany, but here again Austria (+4.63) and especially Poland (+9.64) are ahead of Germany, suggesting that Germany is not only behind their competitors, but is likely to be trailing further in years to come.
According to the EF website:
The EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) is the world’s most comprehensive ranking of countries by adult English skills. To read the full EF EPI report, with a ranking of 63 countries and territories, regional analysis, and demographic trends, visit http://www.ef.de/epi/ .
Text: Martin Epstein