Is Shanghai really doing better than Hong Kong at English?
- Mainland city has scored higher on a global language proficiency index but experts say it ‘doesn’t describe the true picture’
- Test looked at reading and listening abilities, not speaking and writing skills
Shanghai may have outperformed Hong Kong in a global English proficiency ranking for a fifth straight year, but experts say that does not mean people there can communicate in the language any better than Hongkongers.
The mainland city scored 57.91 out of 100 on the annual index compiled by EF Education First – just higher than Hong Kong’s 56.38, Melissa Lam, general manager and chief representative of the company’s China office, said on Wednesday.
The international language training firm bases the index on its free online English test which adults take voluntarily to assess their listening and reading abilities. This year, 1.3 million people whose mother tongue is not English sat the test – 30 per cent more than last year. Their average age was 26.
Sweden, the Netherlands and Singapore topped the ranking, with scores of 70.72, 70.31 and 68.63, respectively. And out of the 88 countries and regions where people sat the test, mainland China was 47th for English-language proficiency with a score of 51.94 – putting it in the category of low proficiency overall.
Shanghai has ranked higher than Hong Kong in the index since 2014. Lam said that was because of Shanghai’s growing middle class, who were increasingly sending their children abroad to study if they could afford it.
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“Ninety per cent of these students are self-funded and they are very motivated to go overseas. And most of them go to English-speaking countries,” she said. “There is a big investment in English-language training in Shanghai.”