A new index sets out to define the geographical areas and industry sectors where business English is spoken the best.

Last week, we posted about the pros and cons of using English as an international business language.

I tend to agree with one of the experts cited: global business English is here to stay, at least for the next few decades. The quality of this form of English, however, is another question.

A new report carried out by GlobalEnglish, a major provider of business English courses, sets out a new benchmark to judge levels in International Business English: the BEI, or Business English Index.

Based on a scale of 1 to 10, the BEI was tested on over 100,000 workers in 152 countries.

The main message of the report is that global business English skills are, well, not that great.

The average score of those tested was 4.46, indicating a workforce that, on the average, can’t quite “participate in discussions with various company departments such as marketing and finance” [level 5], but can just “communicate and understand basic business information” [level 4].

Surprisingly, the travel sector does not stand out, scoring a below-the-average 4. The sectors that rate the highest are technology, health care and pharmaceuticals, and professional services.

Geographically, Northern Europe tops the list with a score of 6.35, and South America gets the lowest mark: 3.28.

It is interesting to note that “Native English Speakers” only score an average of 6.42!

I suppose that business is, indeed, a language in and of itself.

Betty Carlson

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