In 2023, there were around 1.5 billion people worldwide who spoke English either natively or as a second language, slightly more than the 1.1 billion Mandarin Chinese speakers at the time of survey. Hindi and Spanish accounted for the third and fourth most widespread languages that year.

Languages in the United States The United States does not have an official language, but the country uses English, specifically American English, for legislation, regulation and other official pronouncements. The United States is a land of immigrations and the languages spoken in the United States vary as a result of the multi-cultural population. The second most common language spoken in the United States is Spanish or Spanish Creole, which over 41 million people spoke at home in 2021. There were also 3.5 million Chinese speakers (including both Mandarin and Cantonese),1.7 million Tagalog speakers and 1.5 million Vietnamese speakers counted in the United States that year.

Different languages at home The percentage of people in the United States speaking a language other than English at home varies from state to state. The state with the highest percentage of population speaking a language other than English is California. About 44 percent of California’s population was speaking a language other than English at home in 2021.

As of 2021, about 43.9 percent of California's population was speaking a language other than English at home. A ranking of the most spoken languages across the world can be accessed here.

Mexico is the country with the largest number of native Spanish speakers in the world. As of 2024, 132.5 million people in Mexico spoke Spanish with a native command of the language. Colombia was the nation with the second-highest number of native Spanish speakers, at around 52.7 million. Spain came in third, with 48 million, and Argentina fourth, with 46 million. Spanish, a world language As of 2023, Spanish ranked as the fourth most spoken language in the world, only behind English, Chinese, and Hindi, with over half a billion speakers. Spanish is the official language of over 20 countries, the majority on the American continent, nonetheless, it's also one of the official languages of Equatorial Guinea in Africa. Other countries have a strong influence, like the United States, Morocco, or Brazil, countries included in the list of non-Hispanic countries with the highest number of Spanish speakers. The second most spoken language in the U.S. In the most recent data, Spanish ranked as the language, other than English, with the highest number of speakers, with 12 times more speakers as the second place. Which comes to no surprise following the long history of migrations from Latin American countries to the Northern country. Moreover, only during the fiscal year 2022. 5 out of the top 10 countries of origin of naturalized people in the U.S. came from Spanish-speaking countries.

As of February 2025, English was the most popular language for web content, with over 49.4 percent of websites using it. Spanish ranked second, with six percent of web content, while the content in the German language followed, with 5.6 percent. English as the leading online language United States and India, the countries with the most internet users after China, are also the world's biggest English-speaking markets. The internet user base in both countries combined, as of January 2023, was over a billion individuals. This has led to most of the online information being created in English. Consequently, even those who are not native speakers may use it for convenience. Global internet usage by regions As of October 2024, the number of internet users worldwide was 5.52 billion. In the same period, Northern Europe and North America were leading in terms of internet penetration rates worldwide, with around 97 percent of its populations accessing the internet.

According to Cognitive Market Research, the global English Proficiency Test market size is USD 2965.5 million in 2024. It will expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.70% from 2024 to 2031.

North America held the major market share for more than 40% of the global revenue with a market size of USD 1186.20 million in 2024 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.9% from 2024 to 2031.
Europe accounted for a market share of over 30% of the global revenue with a market size of USD 889.65 million.
Asia Pacific held a market share of around 23% of the global revenue with a market size of USD 682.07 million in 2024 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.7% from 2024 to 2031.
Latin America had a market share for more than 5% of the global revenue with a market size of USD 148.28 million in 2024 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.1% from 2024 to 2031.
Middle East and Africa hada market share of around 2% of the global revenue and was estimated at a market size of USD 59.31 million in 2024 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.4% from 2024 to 2031.
Employers category is experiencing the fastest growth in the English Proficiency Test Market. The rising trend of multinational companies and the global nature of business operations necessitate a workforce proficient in English.

Market Dynamics of English Proficiency Test Market

Key Drivers for English Proficiency Test Market

Increasing Global Mobility of Students and Professionals to Increase the Demand Globally

The increasing global mobility of students and professionals is a significant driver in the English Proficiency Test Market. As educational institutions worldwide, particularly in English-speaking countries, attract a growing number of international students, the need for standardized English proficiency assessments becomes critical. Similarly, professionals seeking employment opportunities in multinational corporations or pursuing career advancements in global markets must demonstrate their English language capabilities. This trend is fueled by globalization and the widespread recognition of English as the lingua franca of business, academia, and technology, thereby boosting the demand for reliable and comprehensive English proficiency tests.

Rising Demand for English in Non-English Speaking Regions to Propel Market Growth

The rising demand for English language skills in non-English speaking regions is another crucial driver of the English Proficiency Test Market. As countries in Asia, Latin America, and Europe increasingly integrate into the global economy, proficiency in English becomes a valuable asset for individuals and businesses. Governments and educational systems in these regions are incorporating English language education into their curricula, and companies are investing in language training for their employees to enhance competitiveness. This growing emphasis on English proficiency is creating substantial opportunities for test providers to expand their offerings and cater to a broader audience, further propelling market growth.

Restraint Factor for the English Proficiency Test Market

High Cost of Test Preparation and Registration Fees to Limit the Sales

A significant restraint in the English Proficiency Test Market is the high cost of test preparation and registration fees. Many potential test-takers, especially students and professionals from developing countries, find these costs prohibitive. The expense of preparatory courses, study materials, and the tests themselves can deter individuals from taking the exams, limiting their opportunities for education and employment in English-speaking regions. This financial barrier not only affects individuals but also impacts the overall market growth, as it reduces the number of people who can afford to demonstrate their English proficiency through standardized tests.

Impact of Covid-19 on the English Proficiency Test Market

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the English Proficiency Test Market, disrupting traditional testing methods and accelerating the shift towards digital solutions. With the closure of physical testing centers and travel restrictions, many test providers faced significant challenges in administering exams. This led to a rapid adoption of online and remote testing platforms, which allowed candidates to take exams from the safety...

The United States is the non-hispanic country with the largest number of native Spanish speakers in the world, with approximately 41.89 million people with a native command of the language in 2024. However, the European Union had the largest group of non-native speakers with limited proficiency of Spanish, at around 28 million people. Furthermore, Mexico is the country with the largest number of native Spanish speakers in the world as of 2024.

As reflected in the concept of Global Englishes, English mediates global communication, where English speakers represent not merely those from English-speaking countries like United Kingdom or United States but also global people from a wide range of linguistic backgrounds, who speak the language with diverse accents. Thus, to communicate internationally, cultivating a maximized listening proficiency for and positive attitudes toward global Englishes speakers with diverse accents is ever more important. However, with their preference for American English and its popular culture, it is uncertain whether Swedish youth learners are developing these key linguistic qualities to be prepared for the globalized use of English. To address this, we randomly assigned 160 upper secondary students (mean age = 17.25) into six groups, where each group listened to one of six English speakers. The six speakers first languages were Mandarin, Russian/Ukrainian, Tamil, Lusoga/Luganda, American English, and British English. Through comparing the six student groups, we examined their listener intelligibility (actual understanding), listener comprehensibility (feeling of ease or difficulty), accentedness perception (perceiving an accent as native or foreign), and accentedness acceptance (showing a positive or negative attitude toward an accent) of diverse English accents. The results showed that the intelligibility scores and perception/attitude ratings of participants favored the two speakers with privileged accents–the American and British speakers. However, across all six groups, no correlation was detected between their actual understanding of the speakers and their perception/attitude ratings, which often had a strong correlation with their feelings of ease/difficulty regarding the speakers accents. Taken together, our results suggest that the current English education needs innovation to be more aligned with the national syllabus that promotes a global perspective. That is, students need to be guided to improve their actual understanding and sense of familiarity with Global English speakers besides the native accents that they prefer. Moreover, innovative pedagogical work should be undertaken to change Swedish youths’ perceptions and attitudes and prepare them to become open-minded toward diverse English speakers.

In 2022, around 42.03 million people in the United States spoke Spanish at home. In comparison, approximately 974,829 people were speaking Russian at home during the same year. The distribution of the U.S. population by ethnicity can be accessed here. A ranking of the most spoken languages across the world can be accessed here.

This dataset is about book subjects and is filtered where the books is The politics of language in the Spanish-speaking world, featuring 10 columns including authors, average publication date, book publishers, book subject, and books. The preview is ordered by number of books (descending).

The SPADE project aims to develop and apply user-friendly software for large-scale speech analysis of existing public and private English speech datasets, in order to understand more about English speech over space and time. To date, we have worked with 42 shared corpora comprising dialects from across the British Isles (England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland) and North America (US, Canada), with an effective time span of over 100 years. We make available here a link to our OSF repository (see below) which has acoustic measures datasets for sibilants and durations and static formants for vowels, for 39 corpora (~2200 hours of speech analysed from ~8600 speakers), with information about dataset generation. In addition, at the OSF site, we provide Praat TextGrids created by SPADE for some corpora. Reading passage text is provided when the measures are based on reading only. Datasets are in their raw form and will require cleaning (e.g. outlier removal) before analysis. In addition, we used whitelisting to anonymise measures datasets generated from non-public, restricted corpora.

Obtaining a data visualization of a text search within seconds via generic, large-scale search algorithms, such as Google n-gram viewer, is available to anyone. By contrast, speech research is only now entering its own 'big data' revolution. Historically, linguistic research has tended to carry out fine-grained analysis of a few aspects of speech from one or a few languages or dialects. The current scale of speech research studies has shaped our understanding of spoken language and the kinds of questions that we ask. Today, massive digital collections of transcribed speech are available from many different languages, gathered for many different purposes: from oral histories, to large datasets for training speech recognition systems, to legal and political interactions. Sophisticated speech processing tools exist to analyze these data, but require substantial technical skill. Given this confluence of data and tools, linguists have a new opportunity to answer fundamental questions about the nature and development of spoken language.

Our project seeks to establish the key tools to enable large-scale speech research to become as powerful and pervasive as large-scale text mining. It is based on a partnership of three teams based in Scotland, Canada and the US. Together we exploit methods from computing science and put them to work with tools and methods from speech science, linguistics and digital humanities, to discover how much the sounds of English across the Atlantic vary over space and time.

We have developed innovative and user-friendly software which exploits the availability of existing speech data and speech processing tools to facilitate large-scale integrated speech corpus analysis across many datasets together. The gains of such an approach are substantial: linguists will be able to scale up answers to existing research questions from one to many varieties of a language, and ask new and different questions about spoken language within and across social, regional, and cultural, contexts. Computational linguistics, speech technology, forensic and clinical linguistics researchers, who engage with variability in spoken language, will also benefit directly from our software. This project also opens up vast potential for those who already use digital scholarship for spoken language collections in the humanities and social sciences more broadly, e.g. literary scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, political scientists. The possibility of ethically non-invasive inspection of speech and texts will allow analysts to uncover far more than is possible through textual analysis alone.

Our project has developed and applied our new software to a global language, English, using existing public and private spoken datasets of Old World (British Isles) and New World (North American) English, across an effective time span of more than 100 years, spanning the entire 20th century. Much of what we know about spoken English comes from influential studies on a few specific aspects of speech from one or two dialects. This vast literature has established important research questions which has been investigated for the first time on a much larger scale, through standardized data across many different varieties of English.

Our large-scale study complements current-scale studies, by enabling us to consider stability and change in English across the 20th century on an unparalleled scale. The global nature of English means that our findings will be interesting and relevant to a large international non-academic audience; they have been made accessible through an innovative and dynamic visualization of linguistic variation via an interactive sound mapping website. In addition to new insights into spoken English, this project also lays the crucial groundwork for large-scale speech studies across many datasets from different languages, of...

English Proficiency Test Market size was valued at USD 2.8 Billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 7.8 Billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 14.76% from 2024 to 2031

The market for English proficiency tests will be driven by the rising usage of English as the main language for corporate interactions. Due to the 0.4 billion native English speakers and the 2 billion people who speak English as a second language, using English enables businesses to reach a larger customer base. Science, research, education, and commerce all use English. The market will expand as a result of the rising demand for degree programs from the top universities in English-speaking nations. Students who want to pursue an international education must pass an English proficiency test. Students’ proficiency in speaking and writing English is assessed because these are crucial communication skills for living in those nations.

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Business English Language Training Market Size 2025-2029

The business english language training market size is forecast to increase by USD 5.4 billion at a CAGR of 6.1% between 2024 and 2029.

The global business English language training market is experiencing consistent growth, driven by the increasing need for workplace communication skills and advancements in digital learning tools. Demand for specialized English training in fields like finance, healthcare, and technology is rising as businesses expand globally, while innovations such as mobile learning apps and smart classrooms are making training more accessible and flexible.
This report offers a detailed resource for business professionals, providing market size estimates, growth forecasts through 2029, and analysis of key segments like blended learning, which stands out for its mix of online and in-person methods. It explores trends such as the growing adoption of personalized training programs and highlights challenges like the high cost of premium courses, which can limit scalability. The insights are tailored for practical use in workforce development, client engagement, and strategic planning.
For companies aiming to sharpen their edge in the global business English language training market, this report delivers clear, data-driven guidance on leveraging trends and overcoming barriers in a competitive, interconnected world.

What will be the Business English Language Training Market Size During the Forecast Period?

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In the dynamic business world, effective communication skills in English continue to be a crucial asset for students studying in developing economies and business professionals aiming to excel in their careers. One such teaching method gaining popularity is the four-stage learning model. This approach, which includes pre-production, production, interaction, and production plus stages, encourages learners to actively engage with the language and develop their English proficiency. Another effective teaching method is Experiential Learning, which prioritizes learning through experience. Traditional methods of English language learning, such as books and classroom instruction, have given way to more innovative and interactive approaches. Additionally, institutions specialized in higher education incorporate business English into their curriculum to prepare students for the working world.

How is this market segmented and which is the largest segment?

The market research report provides comprehensive data (region-wise segment analysis), with forecasts and estimates in 'USD billion' for the period 2025-2029, as well as historical data from 2019-2023 for the following segments.

End-user

  Institutional learners
  Individual learners


Learning Method

  Online learning
  Blended learning


Geography

  APAC

    China
    India
    Japan
    South Korea


  Europe

    Germany
    UK
    France


  North America

    Canada
    US


  South America

    Brazil


  Middle East and Africa

By End-user Insights

The institutional learners segment is estimated to witness significant growth during the forecast period. The business english language training market for adult learners is projected to expand steadily over the forecast period. The primary growth driver is the globalization of businesses, necessitating effective communication skills for professionals. Corporate organizations worldwide, particularly in countries like India, France, Italy, Mexico, and China, are investing in digital English language learning to enhance their employees' proficiency and maintain a competitive edge. The market's growth is primarily driven by the corporate sector, where effective business English communication is essential for international collaboration and trade.

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The institutional learners segment was valued at USD 7.30 billion in 2019 and showed a gradual increase during the forecast period.

Regional Analysis

APAC is estimated to contribute 51% to the growth of the global market during the forecast period. Technavio's analysts have elaborately explained the regional trends and drivers that shape the market during the forecast period.

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The business english language training market in Asia Pacific (APAC) is experiencing notable expansion due to the growing demand for effective communication skills in the region's business community. Countries like China, Japan, and India, with their substantial learner bases, are significant contributors to the market's growth. The English-speaking business community remains underdeveloped in APAC, creating a substantial opportunity for companies. With increasing globalization, companies in the region are broadening their market reach, nece

This dataset is about book series and is filtered where the books is The politics of language in the Spanish-speaking world. It has 10 columns such as book series, earliest publication date, latest publication date, average publication date, and number of authors. The data is ordered by earliest publication date (descending).

JANON Speech Corpus

The JANON speech corpus of read speech is a dataset for analyzing non-native Japanese speech. There are non-native Japanese speakers from all parts of the globe contained in the dataset. It consists of isolated words and sentences read aloud by most speakers. Although one speaker was unable to complete the sentences. This dataset was created as a part of my Ph.D. Thesis at the University of Tokyo in order for non-native accent, gemination, and vowel length error recognition. For that, a subset of data was labeled. I will look for this data. Presently, the dataset has not been divided

Purpose

The corpus was intended for engineering purposes. Since speakers are not concentrated to one region, it may not be adequate to use for most analysis purposes, but that should be possible as well.

Corpus Text Material

The corpus consists of 71 sentences and 218 isolated words read aloud. The speakers 73 sentences read-aloud. The sentences and words were chosen to provide a variety in phonemes, accent, gemination, and vowel length.

The CSV file (To be created) consists of the following columns. | Region | Native Language | Sex | Speaker ID | Text Type | Text ID | Filename | Text |

Each filename encodes the region, sex, and identifier, speaker ID, text type and text ID, which all form a unique identifier when coupled. The text is the Japanese text read by the speaker.

Corpus Speaker Description

JANON consists of a 30 speakers of which 4 are native speakers. The speakers were chosen to be native speakers a variety of native languages (20) and a variety of nations. There are representatives from all continents, and many of the major cultural regions in the world (East Asia, South East Asia, South Asia, Anglo-America, Australia, Latin America, the Middle East, and East Africa).

English(Australia) Children Real-world Casual Conversation and Monologue speech dataset, covers self-media, conversation, live, lecture, variety show and other generic domains, mirrors real-world interactions. Transcribed with text content, speaker's ID, gender, age, accent and other attributes. Our dataset was collected from extensive and diversify speakers(12 years old and younger children), geographicly speaking, enhancing model performance in real and complex tasks.Quality tested by various AI companies. We strictly adhere to data protection regulations and privacy standards, ensuring the maintenance of user privacy and legal rights throughout the data collection, storage, and usage processes, our datasets are all GDPR, CCPA, PIPL complied.

Judicial review in the English-speaking world is a book. It was written by Edward McWhinney and published by OxfordUP in 1956.

English Gaming Real-world Casual Conversation and Monologue speech dataset, covers spontaneous dialogue about popular and evergreen games, including player discussions on battle strategies, social interactions, esports news, etc., mirrors real-world interactions. Transcribed with text content, speaker's ID, gender, accent, offensive expression labeling and other attributes. Our dataset was collected from extensive and diversify speakers, geographicly speaking, enhancing model performance in real and complex tasks. Quality tested by various AI companies. We strictly adhere to data protection regulations and privacy standards, ensuring the maintenance of user privacy and legal rights throughout the data collection, storage, and usage processes, our datasets are all GDPR, CCPA, PIPL complied.

Eye movement data from visual world paradigm experiment on anticipation and priming in L2 speakers and attrited L1 speakers of Italian.

Executive function and eye-tracking experiments will be conducted to investigate processing of referential expressions. Conditions of high executive load (when speakers have to switch languages) will be compared to conditions of low load (no language switching required). Speakers’ recovery from inhibition of the unselected language, and how this affects processing, will also be investigated.

The aim of this project is to compare language processing in two groups of adult late bilinguals: (1) native English second language speakers of Italian and German, who acquired these languages after puberty and have achieved high proficiency, and (2) native speakers of Italian and German who are long-term UK residents and are therefore undergoing native language attrition from exposure to English. Recent research suggests that these bilingual groups show similar behavior (both have difficulties with the interface between language and pragmatics, eg processing referential expressions) but there has been no systematic comparison of their online processing.

This project will provide such a comparison. The hypothesis is that these difficulties are caused by inefficiency of the executive function mechanisms controlling attention. These mechanisms are taxed in bilinguals, as they constantly have to suppress one language when they speak or hear the other.

This dataset is about books and is filtered where the book is Anne Boleyn : one short life that changed the English-speaking world, featuring 7 columns including author, BNB id, book, book publisher, and ISBN. The preview is ordered by publication date (descending).

English(the United States) Emotion Scripted Monologue Microphone speech dataset, collected from monologue based on given scripts, covering 10 types of emotional scripts,such as anger, happiness, sadness, etc., matches real-world scenario. Transcribed with text content and other attributes. Our dataset was collected from extensive and diversify speakers(20 American native speakers), geographicly speaking, enhancing model performance in real and complex tasks.Quality tested by various AI companies. We strictly adhere to data protection regulations and privacy standards, ensuring the maintenance of user privacy and legal rights throughout the data collection, storage, and usage processes, our datasets are all GDPR, CCPA, PIPL complied.