The two bar charts show the percentage of students aged 14-16, learning a foreign language in an English speaking country and provide a breakdown of the most popular languages that students learned between 1984 and 2007
Overall, the boys and girls saw significant declines in both years and the languages which were selected by them followed the same patterns except Spanish bucked the trend with a noticeable increase over the period.
The girls showed higher interest in studying foreign languages compared to counterparts over the given period. In 1984, starting at about 50%, the figure for girls experienced a slight decline, dropping to 40% in 2007. The boys followed a similar trend which saw a fall, decreasing from 30% to approximately 25%.
Regarding the types of languages, French stood out among others with the highest figures in both years, while Spanish was the least common. 50% of students learned French in 1984, noticeably more than German and Spanish which were at 20% and 12%. By the final year, there was a marked dip in the percentages of French and German learners, showing 25% and 13%. By contrast, a minimal growth was seen in the proportion of students learning Spanish