Economic Forces Push Spanish to Learn English
20 July 2011
A man browses a book as other people walk by at a book fair in Madrid, Spain.
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
Spain is struggling with a recession. More than one in five Spaniards are out of work. Unemployment is the highest of the seventeen nations that use the euro. But one area of the economy that seems to be doing well is English classes.
A report this year from the EF Education First company listed Spain is a "low proficiency" country in English. Spain ranked just below Italy and just above Taiwan.
About a fifth of the world speaks Spanish.
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There are many Spanish language TV shows and movies. Spaniards can also watch Hollywood movies dubbed in Spanish or news from Latin America.
One of the few English voices on Spanish TV belongs to Richard Vaughan.
RICHARD VAUGHAN: "Hello and welcome back to another half-hour segment of Cloverdale's Corner. Today is Tuesday, and Lourdes has had to leave but we still have four people here ... "
Richard Vaughan is from Texas but for thirty-five years has lived in Spain. He operates that country's biggest English teaching company. It even has its own TV channel. "Aprende Ingles" -- Learn English -- is Spain's only national channel in English.
He says people watch his channel and take his classes to get a better job.
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