Are English standards really falling in Hong Kong? Don't believe all you read
Andrew Sewell says using average scores or anecdotal evidence to gauge language proficiency is misleading, and we may come up short if we search for real evidence of declining standards
This is normally the time of year when EF Education First, an international language training organisation, releases its annual survey of English proficiency levels across the world. Test data is used to produce league tables, the implication being that slipping down the rankings - as Hong Kong did last year - is like being relegated from the Premier League of advanced countries and cities.
If there is one issue upon which people can be expected to agree, it is that Hong Kong's English proficiency level is falling. We are told that if we don't catch up, there'll be hell to pay, as Singapore, South Korea and any number of mainland Chinese cities overtake us.
Not so fast, I argue. Something that is definitely falling in these discussions is the standard of evidence for declining proficiency, along with the amount of reflection on what "proficiency" means in today's world.
Being 'correct' or sounding native does not always equate with the ability to communicate effectively across cultural boundaries
The test-based rankings produced by EF do not provide convincing evidence, partly because they drastically over-simplify the nature of language proficiency. Average scores are misleading. Saying that the average proficiency level of a country is 2.5 is rather like telling a pilot that the average height of a mountain in China is 2,500 metres - what matters is the height of particular mountains.
Language proficiency is situation-specific, and there may be good reasons for it being unequally distributed. Some countries and regions might be better off with "tall mountains and wide plains" - a few highly proficient speakers and a majority with minimal skills - others with "low hills", or basic competence spread widely across the population. Test scores tell us nothing about the actual contours of proficiency in Hong Kong.
Another major limitation of the survey is that traditional proficiency tests rely on native-speaker English for their benchmarks. The major function of English today, however, is to serve as a lingua franca among non-native speakers. Adopting a native-speaker target may be unnecessary and even counter-productive. Being "correct" or sounding native does not always equate with the ability to communicate effectively across cultural boundaries.
When I attend international conferences, the speakers who cause the most furrowed brows among the audience are often the native speakers. They speak too quickly. Vowels get reduced almost to nothing, and inconvenient consonants disappear. They use idiomatic language that is beyond the comprehension of many listeners.