A recent study by the University of Cambridge placed Denmark third out of 44 countries when it comes to speaking English. Traditionally, Danes are highly skilled in foreign languages, and they have previously been named best non-native English speakers in the world.
The Danish language is only spoken by around 5.3 million people and, so, it has long been necessary for Danes to know other languages to be able to get by in a globalised economy. In Denmark, television programs and films are only subtitled in Danish – never dubbed – and a great deal of literature, text books and so on are not translated into Danish as the market is too small to justify the translation costs.
Within the past decade there has been a global explosion in English language studies. EF Education First and the University of Cambridge offer a few suggestions on how to improve and upgrade language skills in general:
• Send all children to school and give them an education on par with today’s global standards.
• Teach English in public schools as a required language for all students, starting at age 12.
• Cultivate a culture of multilingualism.
• Recognise that many adults missed out on English training in state school – and do something about it.
• Teach both communication skills and strategies to negotiate meaning when communication breaks
down.
• Develop more robust, standardised proficiency assessment methods to recognize and reward
effective communication skills over rote learning and grammatical correctness.
