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Which cities in the world speak the best English?The EF English Proficiency Index is the world’s largest ranking of English language proficiency, based on a survey of 1.7 million adults across 54 countries.

Paris, Rome, Madrid and Barcelona are handicapped in their bid to keep ahead with other global cities by their poor English compared with other European cities such as Zurich and Berlin.

Very High Proficiency

High Proficiency

Moderate Proficiency

Low Proficiency

Very Low Proficiency

There are wide disparities between leading cities of the BRIC countries, the developing nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China—competing to be future economic superpowers. Moscow comes 4th and St Petersburg 7th, but Beijing and Shanghai are 19th and 20th, with Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo only 21st and 22nd.

The EF EPI is published by EF Education First, the world’s leading international education company, specializing in language training, academic degrees, educational travel, and cultural exchange. www.ef.com

01 Zurich 64.67

02 Frankfurt 64.09

03 Munich 61.86

04 Moscow 61.31

05 Geneva 61.31

06 Berlin 60.48

07 St Petersburg 58.81

08 Tokyo 58.65

09 Singapore 58.65

10 Milan 58.60

11 Paris 57.67

12 Rome 57.44

13 Seoul 57.15

14 Kyoto 56.71

15 Madrid 56.39

16 Osaka 55.46

17 Barcelona 55.00

18 Hong Kong 53.65

19 Beijing 52.96

20 Mexico City 51.22

21 Shanghai 51.19

22 Rio de Janeiro 50.35

23 Sao Paulo 48.85

24 Jakarta 47.61

25 Dubai 43.92

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Globally, women’s English skills are marginally higher than men’s, but the gap is most significant in the Middle Eastern and North African countries—highlighting English as a key togreater opportunities for women in developing nations.

www.ef.com/epi

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São Paulo

Many of the metropolises at the top of the EF EPI Cities Index have a reputa-tion as extremely “liveable” cities— attractive places for expatriates to work and reside in.

Zurich, placed 1st in the EF EPI index, comes 2nd in the Mercer Quality of Liv-ing survey—the most closely watched league table to judge the habitability of urban centers. Four of the top five cities in the EF EPI index—Frankfurt, Munich and Geneva, as well as Zurich—are also in Mercer’s top ten.

A high level of English contributes directly to the liveability of a city, by removing barriers to communication for foreign residents. By easing interchange between different cities and countries, it also makes cities more porous to business and cultural innovation around the world—which improves the quality of products, services and intellectual life. However, the greatest contribution may be indirect: English boosts income per head, which improves the quality of amenities, from restaurants to health-care, demanded by wealthier citizens.

Better English and higher income go hand in hand

The interaction between English proficiency and gross national income per capita is a virtuous cycle, with improving English skills driving up salaries, which in turn give governments and individuals more money to invest in English training. The relationship also applies anecdotally on a micro level, where improved English skills allow individuals to apply for better jobs and raise their standards of living.

*Source: United Nations, GNI per capita PPP($), 2011

Gross National Income per Capita*

EF EPI Score

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The top three cities in the EF EPI cities index—Zurich, Frankfurt and Munich—all have high income per head even by the standards of developed-economy urban centers.

Quality of Life and English

Zurich

Frankfurt

1st Zurich Switzerland’s largest city is strong a several fields where English proficiency is essential:

• Second in wealth management in Z/Yen Group’s Global Financial Centres Index.

• Has the highest-ranked university outside the native English-speaking world, in the Times Higher Education survey: ETH Zurich.

• Home to several regional headquarters, including the European HQ of Chevrolet, the US car maker.

2nd Frankfurt The city hosts the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s biggest trade fair for the sector. Its high level of English proficiency has also helped turn the city into mainland Europe’s premier financial center, servicing an international client base as well as the domestic German market. Frankfurt is home to the European Central Bank, which conducts much of its business in English. The regional headquarters of several multinationals, including the South Korean automaker Kia Motors, are based in the city. As per pervious comment on sidebar, I would love to cut the Zurich and Frankfurt down a little to make room for commentary on Russian, Brazillian or Asian cities.

9th Singapore Singapore’s high English levels have enabled it to retain its position as one of Asia’s leading financial centers, despite the growing power of rivals such as Shanghai. It is the top Asian location for asset management and insurance, in Z/Yen’s survey of Global Financial Centers. Singapore is also the highest Asian city in the QS rankings of the Best Student Cities, and home to the regional headquarters of leading multinationals such as Google.

22nd São Paulo Sao Paulo is the lowest-performing city in English among the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the leading emerging economies. A challenge for the city is to boost its English levels, increasing its chances of attracting knowledge-economy multinationals. English proficiency is, at least, higher than in Brazil as a whole, and than in most of Latin America.

Singapore

English proficiency is also an important tool in creating a knowledge economy in individual cities and countries—an economy which relies on highly skilled workforces to create high-value-added products and services, in fields such as pharmaceuticals, industrial design, and information and communications technology. This requires heavy research and development, which is facilitated by English proficiency since much of the world’s cutting-edge industrial knowledge and expertise is either written down in English or inside the heads of English speakers.

Many of the higher-placed cities in the EF EPI index, such as Singapore, have attracted a disproportionately large number of the regional or global headquarters of companies and international organizations—centers of international research, development and intellectual endeavor. Singapore is the Asia-Pacific headquarters for new-economy companies such as Google, and is still attracting growth companies such as LinkedIn, which opened its regional HQ there in 2011. Its concentration of good English speakers gives it a competitive advantage which allows it to counter other advantages held by Hong Kong, its knowledge-economy rival, such as Hong Kong’s political and economic links with the growing mainland Chinese economy.

Innovation and English

Better English and higher income go hand in hand

Research and development spending is positively correlated with English profi-ciency on the whole. Around the world productive research increasingly relies on access to international scientific journals, and collaboration between scientists in different countries is extremely common. Today, over 35% of science research articles are the result of collaboration among researchers from different countries, a 40% increase from 15 years ago. Countries that do not train their scientists and engineers to speak English leave them unable to tap into this global knowledge network.

*Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2010

R & D Expenditure as % of GDP*

EF EPI Score

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As cities and countries grow wealthier, their citizens acquire the money needed to pursue an international lifestyle, including foreign travel, media services and entertainment products. English proficiency therefore becomes an end in itself: a way of increasing the breadth of consumer choice.

English confers another advantage. Because it has been, for more than a century, the lingua franca of academia, it is difficult for universities located in cities with poor English to join the world’s top ranks. Most of the highest-placed universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings are in native English-speaking countries. The highest-placed among those that are not in such countries is ETH Zurich, located in the EF EPI’s top-ranked city. The next highest universities are in Tokyo and Singapore - in equal 8th place in the EF EPI table.

Analyzing the English proficiency of individual cities, rather than just countries, is essential because of the often wide divergence between a large urban center and the nation in which it is based. Usually a big city has better average English levels than the country as a whole. This is the case for 19 out of the 21 measured cities for which a comparison is possible. The general rule is that large cities both attract English speakers, drawn there by the prospect of internationally focused work, and increase the incentive for learning English, because proficiency will open more doors than in a more isolated part of the country. The biggest gulf between city and national proficiency is between Moscow and Russia, though the gaps are also very large for St Petersburg and Zurich. The economic benefit of learning English is much greater in Russia’s two largest cities than in regions more isolated from international business and tourism—just as it is greater in Zurich than in more rural Swiss cantons. For similar reasons, Beijing and Shanghai also score more highly than China as a whole. In a sign that Beijing is building up a knowledge-economy workforce—for which English proficiency is important—Microsoft opened its Asia-Pacific research and development headquarters in the city this year.

Regional Hubs and English

Gaps in English levels within China and Russia

Beijing 52.96Shanghai 51.19China 49.00

Moscow 61.31St Petersburg 58.81Russia 52.78

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The EF English Proficiency Index uses data compiled from three different EF English tests completed by hundreds of thousands of adults every year. Two tests are open to any internet user for free. The third is an online placement test used by EF during the enrollment process before students start an English course. All three include grammar, vocabulary, reading, and listening sections. The test administration is identical for all three tasks. There is no incentive for students to inflate their scores on these low-stakes tests by cheating or cramming as the results do not lead to certification or admission to a program.

Test takers

The EF EPI was calculated using combined test taker data from 2009 to 2011, inclusive. Test results from 1,668,798 test takers across 52 countries and two territories were included. Separate test data was gathered from 91,379 adult English learners living in four predominantly English-speaking countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia). Demographic information was gathered on approximately one-fourth of all test takers, including age, gender, and city of residence.

Score calculation

In order to calculate a country’s EF EPI score, each test score was normalized to obtain a percentage correct for that test according to the total number of questions. All the scores for a country were then averaged across the three tests, giving an equal weight to each.

Each country was assigned to a profi-ciency band based on its score. These proficiency bands allow recognition of groups of countries with similar English skill levels, and comparison within and between regions.

EF Education First

EF Education First (EF) was estab-lished in 1965 with the mission to break down barriers in language, culture, and geography. With 400 schools in over 55 countries, EF specializes in language learning, academic degrees, education-al travel, and cultural exchange.

EF English First and EF Englishtown are divisions of EF Education First, committed to teaching English around the world through local schools and online cloud-based platforms. In addition to helping 1,500 corporations with English training, EF is the Official Language Training Supplier to the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.

For more information, please see www.ef.com

Methodology