English in Georgia

The FINNACIAL — It is generally accepted that English is on the rise in Georgia .

The FINNACIAL — It is generally accepted that English is on the rise in Georgia. As English is now the official second language of the country, street signs that were written in Russian just a decade ago have been changed to English.  There are many Georgian publications written in English (including, of course, The Financial).  The Teach Learn Georgia program has been shipping in native speakers by the plane-full to teach students and police in Tbilisi and the regions the current language of business. 

However, there isn’t much readily-available data on the prevalence and level of English spoken.  So, we here at Georgian Opinion Research Business International will try and shed some light on the growing population of Georgian English speakers. 

In one of our more recent polls, in Decembet 2011, we included two questions on English fluency.  One asked how easily the respondent could read and understand a simple news story in English, and the other asked how well the respondent could write a simple English letter for business or personal reasons. In total, about 7% rated their English ability as either “high” or “very high,” and half said they had no English proficiency at all.  27% said their abilities were “poor” or “very poor.”  

Educated Wealthy — Those who speak multiple languages are typically better educated and have higher income, and this is no different in Georgia. Only a quarter of those with post-secondary or tertiary education were completely without English skills, and 43% said they had at least a moderate grasp of the language.  Only one in ten of those with high school education made the same claim, however, and far more could not understand anything (63%).  There are too few people without high school diplomas in the sample to make any real claims to their abilities (less than 1%), but it’s very unlikely they outperform their more educated peers.

Income and education are very closely tied demographics, and so the same relationship exists between wealth and English proficiency.  There is an interesting note, however.  It seems that those who are making more than 950 GEL each month become a little less likely to understand English.  It could be the case that this drop represents people who established themselves with Georgian and Russian and have not bothered to learn English.  Unfortunately, the sample size for these wealthiest respondents is also a bit too small to analyze in terms of age and occupation, so this may remain a mystery until GORBI conducts several more waves of surveys that contain these questions.

Young Urbanites — You’ve also surely guessed that the youth are more fluent than their elders, and that those in Tbilisi understand more English than those in the regions.  You are surely correct, on both points.  Those respondents aged 18-35 claimed the best ability, and each successive generate was worse.  More than 90% of the elderly have either poor or no ability in English comprehension. 

Those in Tbilisi were the most proficient, of course.  14% said they could understand an article well, and another 20% could do so moderately well.  Other regional capitals fared worse, but not as poorly as those in the regions; only 4% of villagers can understand well, and a full 60% have no ability in English whatsoever.

One final note: as these questions were self-evaluations, there is definite room for both under-estimation and self-aggrandizement.  Unfortunately, it’s well beyond the scope of these regular population surveys to administer actual proficiency testing, so it’s our best measure as of yet.

Polls of this kind have margins of error of around 3-5% with a 95% confidence interval.