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Thanks so much for listening to VOA Wonderhits.

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Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America.

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I'm Ashley Thompson.

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And I'm Dan Novak.

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This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower and we use words and phrases especially written for people learning English.

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Coming up on the program, Mario Ritter Jr.

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reports on the disaster that nearly happened in the air after parts of a passenger plane came off.

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Jill Robbins has a story on a Spanish tapestry factory that has stayed in business for 300 years.

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Gina Bennett has the education report on how young people's English language skills around the world appear to be worsening.

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Later, John Russell presents the lesson of the day, but first… Passengers are describing what happened when part of a passenger jet came off at the start of a flight from Portland, Oregon, last Friday.

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The incident resulted in no serious injuries, and the plane returned to Portland Airport soon after the dangerous incident.

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But had a few details been different, the flight could have ended in disaster.

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Kelly Bartlett was one of the passengers on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 from Portland.

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She told the Associated Press, AP, that at first passengers did not know what was happening.

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We didn't know if it meant we were going to crash," she said.

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The incident happened six minutes into the flight from Portland to Southern California's Ontario International Airport.

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The jet, a Boeing 737 Max 9, was traveling at about 640 kilometers an hour.

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It had reached an altitude of 4.8 kilometers.

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That detail is important.

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The plane was still far below its cruising altitude.

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Flight attendants had just told the 171 passengers that they could again use their electronic devices.

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And then a piece of the airplane body, 61 cm by 122 cm, behind the left wing, blew out.

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The piece, called a door-plug, was meant to be a cover over an emergency exit that was not used on that Max 9 version of the airplane.

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The cover

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permits extra seats to be put where an emergency exit would be.

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Air safety rules require airliners to have enough exits to permit all passengers and crew to get out of the aircraft in 90 seconds.

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The AP noted, as fate would have it, nobody was sitting in the two seats next to the blown-out hole.

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Emergency oxygen masks dropped immediately.

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At the same time, wind rushed into the cabin, making it difficult for the flight attendants to walk or hear.

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But they moved toward the hole

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and began moving passengers away from the dangerous area.

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The sound made communication difficult.

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The force from the loss of pressure in the cabin was strong enough to tear the shirt off the body of a teenager sitting nearby.

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His seat-belt kept him in his seat and saved his life, Bartlett said.

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Attendants moved the young person next to Bartlett.

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She asked him if he was hurt.

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He said he was okay, and thanked her for her kindness.

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The pilots and the flight attendants have not made public statements, and their names have not been released.

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However,

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They spoke to National Transportation Safety Board and TSB investigators.

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They said they followed their training.

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The pilot's goal was to get the plane back to Portland quickly.

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The flight attendants worked to keep the passengers safe and calm.

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NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the actions of the flight crew were incredible.

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Bartlett also praised the crew.

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She said she felt like the situation was under control.

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The pilots used an emergency handbook next to the captain's seat.

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The co-pilot contacted air traffic controllers declaring an emergency and the need to descend to 3,000 meters.

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The lower altitude would give passengers more oxygen to breathe.

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Homendy said,

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The attention of the flight attendants immediately turned to five children who were traveling without adult supervision, and two babies being carried by their parents.

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Evan Granger was sitting close to the hole in the plane.

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He told NBC News, there were so many things that had to go right in order for all of us to survive.

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Homendy said,

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that if the blowout had happened just a few minutes later, when the plane would have reached its cruising height, the incident might have been a tragedy.

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NTSB agents recovered the door plug that blew out, finding it completely intact.

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Many other things that flew out of the airplane were also recovered, including a cell phone that was still working.

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Now the agency will investigate why the cover over the unused exit hole came off.

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The incident happened

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days after a Japan Airlines Airbus 350 struck a Coast Guard plane on a runway at Tokyo's Haneda Airport and caught fire on January 3rd.

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I'm Mario Ritter, Jr.

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Spain's Royal Tapestry Factory has been providing clothes called carpets for the floor and tapestries for the wall for palaces and public buildings for more than 300 years.

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Found on a quiet street in Spain's capital Madrid, its artisans combine long-held knowledge of the work with new methods to create cloth-based products.

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The factory was opened in 1721 by Spain's King Felipe V. He brought in Catholic artisans from Flanders, an area found in today's Belgium, to get it started.

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At the time, the area had been under Spanish control.

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Cloth, like wool, can be found in all colors in the factory, and tools, like bobbins and spinning wheels, are everywhere in the factory.

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Some of the original wooden machines are still in use.

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Alejandro Kleker de Elizade is the factory's general director.

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Here, the only products we work with are silk, wool, jute, cotton, linen, he said.

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And these small leftovers that we create, the water from the dyes or the small pieces of wool, everything is recycled.

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Everything has a double, a second use.

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The factory also brings old pieces that have been damaged through time back to good condition.

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And it keeps some of the most important cloth and material records in Europe.

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Now 70% of its buyers are individuals from Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.

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The factory recently received one of its biggest orders, 32 tapestries for the Palace of Dresden in Germany.

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The order is worth more than $1,000,000, and it will provide work for up to five years, Kleecker de Elizade said.

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In 2018, the factory finished a tapestry for a Lebanese buyer based on the work Sabra and Shatila Massacre by Iraqi artist Tia Al-Azawi.

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The cloth shows the 1982-83 violence by Christian Falangist militia in Palestinian refugee camps that were guarded by Israeli troops.

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Creating a tapestry is a difficult process that takes several weeks or months of work for each square meter.

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A tapestry begins with cartoons or drawings on paper that are later copied onto a system of material called warps, which are then woven over.

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One of the factory's well-known cartoonists was master painter Francisco Goya, who began working there in 1780.

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Some of the tapestries he designed are now found in the nearby Prado Museum and Madrid's Royal Collections Gallery.

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I'm Jill Robbins.

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A recent index that measures English language ability around the world finds that young people's English language proficiency is decreasing.

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The 2023 EF English Proficiency Index, or EPI, ranks countries and areas by English proficiency.

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The index is based on test results from 2.2 million people in 113 countries.

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The test is published by EF Education First, a private company based in Switzerland.

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VOA Learning English has a partnership with EF Education First to provide the online test to English learners.

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The EPI found that while young people's English skills are decreasing, working adults continue to increase their proficiency in English.

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There are different opinions about why the difference exists.

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Some people blame the COVID-19 pandemic, but others say artificial intelligence or AI tools could also be a reason.

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EF Education First released the 2023 Index last November.

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EF EPI author Kate Bell warned that the 2023 Index gives a false sense of global stability, meaning English speakers' proficiency stays about the same.

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But the truth is that gains in some countries are being offset by losses in others," Bell said in an EF Education First press release.

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Results were reported by Age Group for the first time in 2015.

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Since that time, the English proficiency of young people has decreased by 89 points.

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The EPI defines young people as being 18 to 20 years of age.

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However, the EPI notes that the 18 to 20 group was mostly stable with big decreases in a few large countries.

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India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Japan showed the largest proficiency decreases among youth.

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Kansuke Ikebe is a 21 year old student from Shiga, Japan.

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He told VOA Learning English that the results are really surprising.

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In my opinion, I've never felt it is decreasing.

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It is maybe because there are many youth who can speak English in my university.

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The EPI report noted that the decrease appears to have taken place when the COVID-19 pandemic interfered with normal education.

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The report said it is not yet clear if learning loss due to COVID will self-correct over time, but increased scores are expected in the future.

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The EPI said the problem is more difficult in countries where proficiency has been decreasing over time and where education systems are teaching English less well than before.

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There has been a decrease in proficiency in Japan for nearly 10 years.

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Ikebe said he could believe the EPI results because of the way English is taught in Japan.

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It makes nobody want to learn English more.

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It is not practical at all and really boring.

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However, working adults, people 26 years old and older, have been improving their English since 2015.

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The EPI said this might be because the value of a shared language is most recognized in the workplace.

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English creates possibilities for individuals and productivity for organizations.

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Results from the index also show a difference between men and women, what it calls a gender gap.

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The gender gap among those aged 18 to 25 is three times bigger than it is among working adults.

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Men's proficiency has improved by 14 points since 2015, while women's has decreased by 19 points.

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The lack of women in international jobs could be one reason for the gender gap, the EPI said.

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But the gender gap among those aged 18 to 25 might demonstrate a problem engendered by educational systems themselves or a societal problem schools are failing to address, the report said.

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An exception was the Middle East.

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The average score for women in that area has increased by 44 points, placing them ahead of men there.

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One notable trend in the 2023 EF EPI is that all the very high-proficiency countries and many of the high-proficiency countries had lower average scores than in 2022.

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This could be a possible effect of the pandemic on learning, travel, and in-person communication.

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The Czech Republic is one country whose score dropped in 2023.

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Sabina Virab is with the Czech office of EF Education First.

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She told the Czech news agency online teaching during the pandemic affected children's English skills.

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Schools and students are trying to catch up on what was missed, she told the news organization, but they are still not moving forward.

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The EPI report says that learning a language provides understanding of new ideas as well as better understanding of people.

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These skills, the report said, remain beyond the reach of AI, or artificial intelligence.

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But Ikebe said in Japan, now AI and translation are being developed well.

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so they don't need to learn English if they just do their homework.

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I think they don't use it as a tool to communicate, just a subject to pass the entrance exam.

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Jeannie Tse is a country manager at EF Hong Kong and Macau.

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She spoke to the Standard Newspaper in Hong Kong.

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Xi said that while AI has changed the way young people work and learn, the importance of schools, teachers, and face-to-face instruction remains.

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I do not believe that AI can completely replace language learning, Xi said, but educators can harness AI to enhance language learning methods.

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I'm Gina Bennett.

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Gina is here now to talk more about the EF English Proficiency Index that she reported about.

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The EF EPI ranks countries according to their English language skills, right Gina?

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Hi, Dan.

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That's right.

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It uses results from the EF Standard English Test to rank countries in the world, but it also breaks down the results in different categories.

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Gender and age, which we talked about in the article, as well as region, economics, innovation, and industry.

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So tell us, what country has the best English in the world?

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For the fifth year in a row, the Netherlands has scored the highest on the standard English test.

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So they are ranked as having the best English as an additional language proficiency in the world.

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After the Netherlands comes Singapore, Denmark, Austria, and then Norway.

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So there's one country that isn't in Europe.

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What other information was there in the report?

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It also presents findings according to seniority.

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That means who's older or has a higher position in a company or organization.

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In the past, those with more seniority had higher levels of English, but that gap is getting smaller.

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Listeners can explore all the findings, including those about their own country, in the full report online.

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Thanks again, Gina.

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You're welcome, Dan.

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In this next report, Faith Perlow tells us about new developments in the jewelry industry.

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We learn that some jewelry makers are using materials in new and interesting ways.

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Pay careful attention to the word gem.

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We will talk more about it after the report.

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For some, a natural diamond, created over billions of years, is what they have always wanted.

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But an award-winning British designer sees greater worth in jewelry made using laboratory-grown gems and metal from recycled cans.

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Recycling is a process that makes something new out of something that has been used before.

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Annabella Chan, the jewelry designer, said she chose her materials after seeing what she said were poor working conditions in diamond mines.

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These are some of the most precious and valuable commodities in the world that just didn't make any sense to me, she said in her store in Britain's capital of London.

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Instead, her designs use lab-grown diamonds, recycled aluminum from cans, and pearls, a kind of jewel found in animals, grown from regenerative farming.

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Chan's company did not give sales numbers but said it had seen strong demand since the COVID-19 pandemic.

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She won the Game Changer division at the British Luxury Awards in November.

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Edan Golan, Diamond Research and Data, studies the worldwide diamond industry.

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It found that the lab-grown jewelry market has seen yearly growth of 20% in recent years.

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That has driven worldwide profits to $15 billion.

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As more producers enter the market, selling prices for lab-grown diamonds have fallen.

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Companies are looking to stand themselves apart from competitors.

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They are doing so through their jewelry design.

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Pandora is a major seller of lab-grown diamonds.

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Joshua Brahman, the head of diamonds at Pandora, said lab-grown gems could create a new area of interest for jewelry design.

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Another point of difference is the effects it has on natural resources.

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Chan uses suppliers who use technology to capture carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere to make diamonds.

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Chan said, so effectively taking something negative and turning it into something positive.

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I'm Faith Perlow.

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Before the report, we asked you to pay careful attention to the word gem.

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Can you remember when you heard it?

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You heard the word a couple times in the report.

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Let's listen again to the first example.

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For some, a natural diamond, created over billions of years, is what they have always wanted.

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But an award-winning British designer sees greater worth in jewelry made using laboratory-grown gems and metal from recycled cans.

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Gem is a noun.

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We spell it like this, G-E-M.

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GEM consists of three sounds, two consonants, and one vowel sound.

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In order to improve our pronunciation of the word, we can do a technique called backwards buildup.

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What this means is that we start with the last sound of the word, then include the sounds that come before it.

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Let's work through this together.

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We will start with the last consonant sound.

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Repeat after me.

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Now let's say the vowel sound and the final consonant sound.

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Now let's add the first consonant sound.

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We will say the entire word.

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A gem is a stone that has been cut and polished for use in jewelry.

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Historically, gems have been very costly and valuable.

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As a result, English speakers sometimes use the noun gem in a broad sense.

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They use it to describe something as valuable or of high quality.

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Consider this example.

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Imagine a small, wonderful restaurant.

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Let's assume it is located in an area of the city that not many visitors go to.

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A person might describe the restaurant as a hidden gem.

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In other words, the restaurant is of high quality, but not well known.

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In this way, we might say it is hidden from public view.

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You might also describe an area as a hidden gem.

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A beach, a mountainous area, a small town, or a neighborhood.

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And that's the lesson of the day.

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I'm John Russell.

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And that's our program for today.

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Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world.

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I'm Ashley Thompson.

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And I'm Dan Novak.