Only 56% of Hungarian students studying to become economists speak English on a “negotiating” level, according to a recent European Student Barometer survey summarized by Világgazdaság. Twenty-four Hungarian higher education institutions were involved in the study.
Of European economics majors, over 85% speak English, while in Hungary, this figure is only 56%. Among technical students the percentage is even lower, as only 38% have a command of spoken English.
The survey involved over 90,000 students enrolled in 550 higher education institutions in 20 European countries. Nearly 11,000 Hungarian students, mainly majoring in economics and technical fields, filled in the questionnaire.
Free tip for the telly companies: Stop dubbing TV programs! When people hear only hungarian, it rarely sparks interest for other languages.
I agree. Watching TV is an easy and sometimes even entertaining way of learning new languages.
I get 70 channels here and the only ones in English are a couple of news stations, repeating the same half-hour boredom all day.
We need Comedy Central, Travel, History, Discovery, National Geographic, etc. channels in English, dammit.
We want movies with subtitles and also a few original sitcom reruns, like Seinfeld, Simpsons, South Park and Married With Children.
Meanwhile all neighboring countries’ young people are getting proficient at speaking English by watching House, Lost and Beverly Hills 90210.
I fully agree, in most northern european countries the tv is always in original language.
However, the situation is actually the same in most neighboring countries, with the exceptions of croatia and slovenia which have no dubbing.
Would be nice to at least give a choice.
I have slowly watched as the English channels that were available
went to basically Zero.
(MTV, etc.)
Technology is there, no reason why they cant give a choice.
(T-Mobile does for some of the programming, but its not available
everywhere.)
Peace