The first bar chart illustrates the percentage of male and female pupils aged 14 to 16 who chose to learn another language in one particular English-speaking nation from 1984 to 2007. Moreover, the second bar chart gives information about the three most popular languages during the same time period.
Overall, it is evident that there is a downward trend in both boys and girls engaging in learning a new language besides English over the given period. In addition, a similar pattern was witnessed in the statistics of popularity of French and German, except for Spanish, which showed a significant increase.
When it comes to the first chart, in 1984, the proportion of females interested in studying another language stood at nearly 50%, approximately 20% higher than that of males. However, by 2007, both genders were less engaged in that activity, leading to a moderate drop, with exactly 40% of girls and around 25% of boys, respectively.
According to the second bar chart, French stood out as the most commonly chosen language among the three options initially, with 50% of all students, followed by German with 20% and the least popular language, Spanish, with only 5%. By 2007, there was a dramatic decline in the number of students studying French, to only around a quarter, as well as in German, to nearly 13%. Whereas, the percentage of Spanish learners doubled, reaching 10% at the same time.