Slovenians Took Sixth Place In The World For Proficiency In English Language

The English have published the results of an interesting research, which can make us Slovenians quite proud. According to these results the level of proficiency in English as the first foreign language of Slovenian adult population places us on the sixth place in the world.

Only Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Finland placed ahead of us, with more than 65% of adult population with fluent knowledge of the English language. Slovenia took the sixth place, with 64.97% of adult population capable of communicating effortlessly in the most widespread language of the world. Behind us are Estonia, Luxemburg, Poland, Germany, Austria, and Singapore as the first non-European country. Portugal, Malesia and Argentina complete the first 15.

“They grew up in multicultural environment”

It has been established that a great improvement has been made in Slovenia as far as proficiency in English is concerned in the last two years. Slovenians usually achieve better results than inhabitants of other OECD countries at international tests, e.g. TOEFL and PISA.

“Slovenians are among the best English speakers in the world considering it is not their native language. Historically speaking, Slovenia developed on multicultural foundations. The English language, along with the German language, has a special position in the national curriculum, and almost all pupils learn both mentioned languages,” stands in the explanation published at the Independent journal website.

The research is based on the English Proficiency Index which compares the number of people learning a certain language with the quality of teaching, and proficiency in English of the participants of the courses. It is based on the results of the general standardized test of proficiency in English (ES Standard English Test), which is equal in all the countries with non-English native languages. 70 countries were included in the research, with 910,000 adults who took courses in English in 2014, or learned the language online.

Source: rtvslo.si