The pie charts below show responses by teachers of foreign languages in Britain to a survey concerning
The pie charts compares proportions of different reasons of students’ learning a foreign language according to their teachers in Britain.
Overall, teachers reported that a majority of their students learning a second language to serve their purpose of travelling, business and purchasing property overseas. It was also shown that a large segment of students decided to change their purposes. Additionally, there was recorded a marked increase in the proportion of learners who wanted to buy international property.
Initially, roughly one-third of students learned a foreign language because of travelling, making up the largest share. However, this reason presented the steepest drop from 33% to only 3% in the latest report. As for business, slightly over a quarter of total students learned the second language for business but this figure declined moderately from 26% to 19%. The sharpest growth was recorded in the percentage of students learning for purchasing property overseas, rising from 19% to 34%, overtaking the initial figure for travelling by 1 percentage point to become the most popular reason. Another category showed a sharp increase was social contacts, almost doubling from 7% to 15%.
While 15% of students did not change their original intentions, other reasons such as general interest, foreign partners, and personal development still presented small shares. Particularly, the proportion of students learned a new language because they were interested in rose from 3% to 6%. In contrast, foreign partners and personal development experienced a reverse trend, declining from 5% to 4% and from 7% to 4%, respectively.