Europe

It feels like they tanked the test out of spite. I'm curious about the methodology of the study, but France has far too much tourism to believe this without seeing the underlying data.

Portugal runs a lot of technology/near-shore outsourcing for across Europe where English is still a common collaboration language, where Spain supports a lot of Tourists across the Eurozone, and generally supports those tourists in multiple languages.

I'd expect this contributes at least partially to the difference.

As someone from one of these top proficiency countries, Sweden, it's not just the educational system. Learning english in school will only get you so far. You need to be exposed to english much more than that to become proficient. I was lucky enough to be incredibly exposed to english due to having an aunt that lived there, however.

I remember being on vacation in Germany as a kid. On the boat to Germany, there was a TV and no one around, I was bored, Terminator was on, cool. Except... They spoke german. I flip the channels, find the Simpsons, and they speak, german. After we had gotten through Germany and made it to France, I once again saw something on a TV somewhere, and they spoke French, though I could see the lips didn't quite match what was said. I realised it was dubbed to French.

And that's when I understood how I, as a 12 year old kid, could speak english better than most german and french adults.

These days are different I'm sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are some traces remaining.

Everyone in France speaks English the moment an English speaker tries to speak French.

My French sucks. I would intentionally butcher French just so they’d roll their eyes and start speaking English.

That checks out for Quebec as well.

It was skewed off the bottom of the scale by scouse.

Yeah the obvious joke is "United Kingdom: DNF"

France?

It is actually a feature as far as bureocracy and diplomacy is concerned. If a language is the non-native language for more or less everyone, no country has an advantage in negotiations due to rethorical skills and so on.

And besides, the only other real options would be French or German, and really no one wants that.

Where in Germany? This coulf be a latent East/West divide.

The EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) attempts to rank countries by the equity of English language skills amongst those adults who took the EF test. It is the product of EF Education First, an international education company, and draws its conclusions from data collected via English tests available for free over the internet. The index is an online survey first published in 2011based on test data from 1.7 million test takers. The most recent edition was released in November 2023.

Wikipedia.org

So the data is not representative for the entire population of a country.

Currently in university or so, and there is a large countryside vs. city gap.

In my experience there has been a relatively recent massive improvement in English skills by the younger generation. Anyone 35+ is still very much behind though. As an elder Millenial myself, it actually caught me on a wrong foot carreerwise as being able to speak English well is no longer considered to be a selection criteria for many jobs, because so many can do it and it is assume a given.

I don't know what study these numbers are based on, but many of them only assess certain (typically younger) age groups. In my experience, the people coming out of school today in Germany are often quite good in English.

Edit: Looked it up. The data are not based on any study but the results of test takers that aim to earn a certain language certificate. So no specific age group but still likely younger people. The sample is completely self-selected, though, so it's hard to say anything definitive. From the Wikipedia page:

The EF EPI 2024 edition was calculated using test data from 2.1 million test takers in 2023. The test takers were self-selected. 116 countries and territories appear in this edition of the index. In order to be included, a country was required to have at least 400 test takers.

And more:

The EF English Proficiency Index has been the subject of criticism in literature. From the point of view of methodology, it suffers from self-selection bias. Instead of testing the level of English proficiency in the population, it tests the level of English of those who self-select.

This seems like a very poor basis for a country ranking.

French speakers being French speakers. Case in point: France scores lower than fucking Russia