PANTO CREW WANTED Learning languages

Anna Ellis

SEVENTY per cent of under‐20s in Alicante do not understand English at all which means that nearly 250,000 young people living in the province admit that they know nothing of the English lingo.

The region has the second worst figures at a national level which are only surpassed by Gali‐cia.

The news has been revealed by the latest data from the Survey of Essential Characteris‐tics of the Population and Dwellings carried out by the National Statistics Institute (INE).

Some 73.2 per cent of under‐20s in the re‐gion admit to not understanding English at all, which is the second worst figure in Spain, only surpassed by Galicia (73.7 per cent). As age in‐creases, the figure grows, with 81.5 per cent of people aged between 40 and 59 saying they know nothing about the English language.

The INE data confirms that millennials aged between 20 and 39 years of age are the ones who have the highest level of knowledge, al‐though they do not demonstrate a perfect command of the language either, as 68 per cent do not understand it.