Slovak Job Seekers Speak Better English than Czechs

A new study has found that “Slovaks, in general, have a better knowledge of English than Czechs and Hungarians, with a larger number of Slovaks reaching the B1 proficiency level.”

The data, compiled from a joint study of English proficiency in job seekers conducted by TrackTest.eu and Profesia.sk, was released earlier this week.

Around 30,000 job applicants from three countries—Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary—were tested between 2015-2017. Only applicants who claimed a knowledge of English on their CVs participated in the study.

The three-part test included grammar, reading comprehension, and listening comprehension.

Slovak jobseekers fared best, achieving a universal Tracktest score of 491 points on a 1,200 point scale; the study also notes that Slovakia has a higher proportion of people who have reached level B2 and higher than the Czech Republic (479) and Hungary (474).

According to Profesia.sk spokesperson Nikola Richterova, “The results of the testing showed that Slovak and Czech job applicants tend to make similar mistakes. They scored similarly in 15 out of 17 grammar categories, a fact that is most probably due to the closeness of their languages.”

Both Czechs and Slovaks outranked Hungarians in adjectives, comparing adjectives, and vocabulary.

One interesting pattern emerging from the study might serve as a warning to job seekers tempted to pad their CV: while most employers seek to hire applicants with a knowledge of English at a B2 level, over half of the applicants, regardless of nationality, didn’t meet these requirements.