Comparing National-level English Proficiencies and the Necessity of a Critical Eye

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Individuals, companies, governmental agencies and other organisations sometimes find it useful to be able to compare the English proficiency of one country with another, but to do so they must rely on the use of a very limited number of data resources which were not intended for that purpose and for which they are not necessarily suitable. Using the Education First (EF) English Proficiency Index and the European Commission’s Special Eurobarometer 386 for illustrative purposes, this paper demonstrates why such use of these measures is invalid and why researchers and writers should be more critical of the data and results they use in support of their academic work. Ultimately, it is concluded that no reliable, valid and practical instrument or methodology yet exists by which data from a sufficiently representative sample of each country’s population could be gathered, and that therefore comparisons of one country’s English proficiency with another is not currently possible. However, the big data provided by EF and the European Commission can be useful in illustrating tendencies.

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