Determinants of English proficiency in adolescents in 7 European countries

Kees de Bot
Groningen

Una ricerca comparativa ha confrontato le competenze in inglese dei giovani di 14-16 anni in 7 paesi europei, analizzando i fattori determinanti per il loro raggiungimento. Generalmente i livelli raggiunti nei paesi nordici sono superiori a quelli di Spagna e Francia.
I giovani hanno molti contatti con i media in lingua inglese (televisione, computer, internet, musica), con un effetto positivo sulle competenze. In Spagna e in Francia i programmi televisivi non sono in inglese, ma vengono doppiati, mentre nei paesi nordici i programmi inglesi (i film e i video) vengono trasmessi in lingua originale con i sottotitoli. Questo fatto ha probabilmente conseguenze positive sullo sviluppo delle competenze linguistiche.
La conclusione generale però è che solo una parte limitata delle differenze costatate tra gli studenti sono spiegabili con i dati raccolti nel progetto. (red.)

In this article an overview is presented of a large scale project aimed at the assessment of English proficiency and its determinants in a group of 14-16 year olds in 7 European countries. The project was set up by the European Network of policy makers for the evaluation of education systems following a call from different EU organizations to evaluate skills in English. A call for participation was sent out and in the end 7 countries decided to take part in the project. The project was carried out in 2002/2003. A complete overview of the findings can be found in Bonnet et al.( 2004). Due to space limitations only a part can be reported on here. Table 1 provides an overview of the number of students from different countries.
Though the total number of students involved was fairly large, the project cannot claim to have tested a representative sample of pupils from all countries involved. Even when characteristics of the total group were known, it turned out to be very difficult to implement them. E.g. in Germany only one of the Countries (Länder) decided to take part, and in the Netherlands, no school in one of the larger cities was willing to participate. Nevertheless, the project has provided a unique set of data. [...]