The supplied chart illustrates the proportion of a second language learned by New Zealand students between 2006 and 2014.
Overall, six different languages were learned in schools in these 9 years, the most popular language among them was French. All of the languages had fluctuations; for example, some of them had upward trends, but gradually this trend reversed, likewise for languages which had downward trends, such as Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese.
Nevertheless, some of the languages at the beginning started with an increasing trend and at the end of the period, experienced decline, for example, Spanish and German. But some of them finished the last year with growth, such as French and Chinese. Throughout these 9 years, the French language consistently maintained the leader, starting under 30 percent and finishing over 30 percent. Three languages that didn’t change much were German, Spanish, and others. These three languages changed almost 5 percent, but German diminished, while Spanish and others rose nearly 5 percent.
Two languages that experienced significant changes are Japanese and Chinese. Interestingly, both of them changed by approximately 10 percent. However, Japanese dropped nearly 10 percent but in 2013 rebounded and reached almost 20 percent as a second language learned by youngsters. At the beginning, Chinese started with the lowest rates among all of the languages with almost 5 percent; however, it finished the period with growth and obtained nearly 15 percent of students learning. In summary, each of these 6 languages experienced fluctuations; some of them had increasing trends, in contrast, some of them had decreasing trends, in spite of oscillations, French consistently maintained a dominant position and the language which wasn’t popular for children was German.