The Swiss have slipped slightly - down to 19th place - in an annual ranking of English-language skills. The Dutch once again came first in the survey by EF Education First.
Nordic countries again dominated in the English language ranking: the Netherlands came top, followed by Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Saudi Arabia, Kyrgyzstan and Libya occupied the bottom of the ranking.
Switzerland remains in the group of countries with “high” English language skills, but EF observed a small decline across all Swiss language regions (German-, French-, Italian- and Romansh-speaking). International cities like Geneva and Zurich were no exceptions. Lausanne was the only place showing progress.
“The Swiss education system is progressive when it comes to the teaching of English, but there is still not a very strong practical emphasis,” said EF Switzerland Director Christopher Hein.
“Efforts must be made to ensure the gap between Switzerland and the top countries doesn’t widen.”
The EF English Proficiency Index is a global ranking based on a survey of 2.3 million adults in 100 countries. The index draws its conclusions from data collected via online EF English reading and listening tests.
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Swiss maintain ‘good’ English skills
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According to a survey of 88 nations, Switzerland remains stable in its command of English, though it isn’t one of the four national languages.
This content was published on
Switzerland had improved its absolute score for the third consecutive year, but because other countries had improved more, it fell two places to 18th out of 63 countries – or 15th out of 24 European countries – surveyed for the fourth edition of the EF English Proficiency Index. The studyExternal link, released on Wednesday by…
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Switzerland just barely maintained the designation “good knowledge”. It ranked behind neighbouring Austria (10th place) and Germany (11th), as well as Portugal (13th) and Romania (16th). But it performed distinctly better than its other neighbours Italy (28th) and France (37th). The survey, carried out for the fifth time by EF, measured the English knowledge of…
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