pic: preply.com
It wasn’t first page news, but it was still in bold text in Svenska Dagbladet’s newspaper this morning – Swedes no longer best at English. In a survey run by EF, Education First, Sweden landed in second place this year, after the Netherlands. In the nine years since EF started the survey, Sweden has been in first place for 4 of those years (ef.se).
Is there a crisis? Nja. “Maybe some Swedes are taking English a little too much for granted because we’ve ranked so highly for a long time” said Malin Ankarberg, Education First’s country manager for Sweden. “I don’t think we should make a big thing out of this year’s results. We see a small step back, but maybe that’s necessary to get people to realize that we can do better.”
Education First, or EF as it is more commonly known, is an international company with offices in a dozen countries, and arranges language tours and courses as well as education exchanges. If you or someone you love wants to beef up their English, coincidentally, EF has a course just for you.