The line graph compares the proportion of elementary school students learning a foreign language by language learned from 2006 to 2014.
Overall, all the languages showed a fluctuation in the percentage of students learning. French was the most sought-after language, while the reverse of the trend was illustrated via the rates of studying Chinese and German.
From the graph, it is clear to see that the most common second language learned by primary school students in New Zealand was French, with 29% in 2006. It reached a peak of more than 30% in 2008 and fluctuated over a few years, ending up at 30% in 2014. Japanese was the second most common from its start (28%) until it dropped dramatically and ended up in 2014 with a 50% decrease compared to its beginning. Spanish surpassed the Japanese rate in 2009, it continued to go up and hit a high in 2011 (26%) and gradually declined until 2014 with 24%.
On the other hand, the two least widespread languages were Chinese and German. Although Chinese did not garner much attention from the first stage with under 5%, a remarkable change was shown when its proportion skyrocketed from 2010. In contrast, German witnessed a noticeable fall over the period shown, which made Chinese excel in 2013. At last, it reached the nadir in 2014 (8%). Other languages to be learned also saw an oscillation, bottoming out in 2012 but rapidly bouncing back and peaking in 2013 with more than 10%.