DAVAO A NOTCH HIGHER THAN MANILA IN ENGLISH

Davao and Manila are the only Philippine cities included in the listing for Education First English Proficiency Index 2019 City Scores

DAVAO CITY scored 0.84 points better than Manila in English proficiency in the 9th edition of the EF EPI (Education First English Proficiency Index), a ranking of 100 countries and Regions by English skills.

Davao and Manila are the only Philippine cities included in the listing for EF EPI 2019 City Scores. Both cities were listed under Very High Proficiency with Davao getting a rating of 63.85 at 15th place and Manila with 64.69 at 16th place where Amsterdam with a score of 71.35 ranked No. 1. At second is Stockholm with 69.24 and third is Copenhagen with 68.52. The only other Southeast Asian city in the Very High Proficiency list is Kuala Lumpur with a score of 63.42 occupying 19th of the 20 top cities. At the bottom of the list occupying the 16th rank in the cities listed as Very Low Proficiency is Tashkent in Uzbekistan with a score of 42.52.

Over-all, the Philippines is ranked 20th and classified under High Proficiency (6th place under this classification as there are 14 countries in the Very High Proficiency list) with a score of 60.14. In Asia, Philippines ranked No. 2, second to Singapore which has a score of 66.82 for a Very High Proficiency rating and ranked 5thover-all. The Philippines score this year, however, is 1.70 points lower than in the 2018 report. Singapore slipped too by 1.81 points.

As reported, only Taiwan showed a significant improvement in English proficiency for the period as majority of the countries in Asia saw a decline.

It was not explained how the EF EPI selected the cities for ranking.

According to the 2019 report, this edition is based on test data from more than 2.3-million test takers around the world who took the EF Standard English Test or one of the English placement tests in 2018.

The EF SET is an online, adaptive English test of reading and listening skills. It is available for free online (www.efset. org/research/).

“EF EPI 2019 scores have been found to correlate strong with TOEFL iBT 2017 scores and IELTS Academic Test 2017 scores. These correlations show that, while these tests have different designs and test taker profiles, they reveal similar trends in national English proficiency,” the report explained.

The 2019 report in PDF can be accessed through https:// bit.ly/2YD25G3.