Study: Russia and Bolivia at the same level of English proficiency

International educational center for teaching English EF Education First spent another study of the level of English proficiency in different countries. It was attended by 2.2 million volunteers from 113 countries, including Russia. After calculating the average scores of residents of different countries, the organizers divided the countries into 5 levels of language proficiency: very high, high, average, low and very low.

In 2023, Russia took 41st place, sharing it with Bolivia. This is a group of intermediate language proficiency. Higher in the ranking are Honduras, Georgia, Belarus and Ghana, leaders in the group of average English proficiency. The first three places in the overall ranking were taken by the Netherlands, Singapore and Austria.

EF Education First conducted such a study for the first time in 2011 - and then Russia took 32nd place out of 44 countries. In 2021, Russia was in 51st place out of 112, and in 2022 - in 40th place out of 111.

It is noteworthy that in Russia the best knowledge of the language is in large cities, but not in the capital: the top three cities in the country with the highest level of language proficiency are Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk and St. Petersburg. Moscow is in fourth place, Ekaterinburg is in fifth. Residents of Chechnya, the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Mari El, the Samara Region and the Republic of Bashkortostan speak English worse than others.

The organizers noted that the rating cannot be called absolute: the level of knowledge of people who themselves decided to take part in the tests was assessed, and not of random people on the street.

What is your level of English? Has it gotten higher in the last couple of years? Write in the comments!