The two charts illustrate the percentage of male and female 14- to 16-year-old English speakers learning a foreign language between the year of 1984 and 2007 and the changes of the top three foreign languages which were studied in the same period.
Overall, it seems to have a larger proportion of female students compared to the males in 1984 which both decreased to a lower percentage in 2007. Additionally, there are drops of the two studied foreign languages, French and German, compared to the rise of Spanish language in the same two years.
In 1984, nearly half of all female 14-to 16-years-old English speakers studied a foreign language compared to the percentage of only 30% of the males. By 2007, both of the males and females experienced the drop to approximately 25% and 40% respectively.
Moreover, regarding the studied foreign language in 1984, the largest proportion of French accounted for 50% followed by 20% of German and nearly 5% of Spanish. Thereafter, while there are drops of French and German languages by 25% and 5% respectively, Spanish experienced a two-fold increase, reaching 10%.