The bar charts reveal the percentages of learners aged 14 to 16 studying a second language in an English-speaking country and top three languages that were learned the most in two years, 1984 and 2007.
Overall, it is evident that girls were more interested in learning non-English languages than boys. Moreover, French was the most popular language to be learned in both years, 1984 and 2007.
In 1984, nearly half of students studying a foreign language were female (about 49%), whereas the proportion for male was only 30%. During the year, French was absorbed by half of the students, making it the most favored language. Next up was German with a fifth of students enrolled in. Spanish was the least preferred among the three languages with a mere of only 5%.
23 years later, there was a significant drop in the number of students studying a different language: girls accounted for 40% while it was approximately 27% for boys. It is clear that French and German were decreased in popularity, although French was still the most learned language in the country. An interesting point is that more people learned Spanish in 2007 than in 1984.