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One of the biggest struggles that expats encounter after coming to China is the lack of English skills. True, China is its own country with its own language(s), but if this is your first time traveling outside of your home country (especially to Asia) the lack of English proficiency can be a shock.
Education First (EF) is an international company focused on language education and cultural exchange. For the past five years they have been conducting a multinational English Proficiency Index derived from administering online tests. This year, they were able to test 950,000 people in 72 countries.
As you might expect, China didn’t rank so high. The overall index for China was 50.94, ranking it 39th out of the 72 countries placing it on the low side. Still, China was able to best Brazil (40), Mexico (43), and Ukraine (41), and even Thailand (56) which receives a non-stop flow of tourists and English teachers. Northern European countries have consistently ranked high; Netherlands (1), Denmark (2), Sweden (3), Norway (4), and Finland (5) took the top 5 spots.
So what Chinese city are you more likely to be able to find someone proficient in English? Surprisingly, Hong Kong is only the second most English-fluent city in China with a ranking of 54.29. The top spot, according to EF, is Shanghai, which received an index score of 55.54. Beijing rounds out the top 3 Chinese cities with a score of 53.49. Taiwan and Tianjin battled for the fourth spot with Taiwan having a slight advantage.
Though China didn’t do so well, this year’s results show that Asia is on the rise. This year, Singapore became the first country ever to land in the highest proficiency band with an index of 63.52 giving it the overall number 6 spot in the report.
Other key points from the English Proficiency Index is that women speak better English than men across all age groups and in nearly every country. This has been a consistent trend since EF started the index. Latin America’s English proficiency is on the decline, though only slightly. And finally, North Africa and the Middle East are 「uniformly in the lowest proficiency bands,」 with their English not showing signs of improvement.
You can check out the full report at EF’s website www.ef.edu/epi/
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