The first chart demonstrates the percentage of English native 14- to 16-year-old female and male students engaging in second language study in a country, while the second chart compares and contrasts the popularity of the three most chosen languages between 1984 and 2007.
Overall, female students seemed more inclined to study a foreign language than male students in both of the examined years. Likewise, the popularity ranking of the top three foreign languages, led by French, also remained unchanged after 23 years.
In the first bar chart, girl students aged 14 to 16 accounted for almost 50% while boy students made up 30% in total in 1984. It can be seen that this gap between the two groups of students narrowed by approximately 5% after 23 years, with girls’ proportion falling to 40% and boys’ to around 25%.
Regarding the second chart, even though the top three popular foreign languages experienced no change in ranks, it is noticeable that their popularity shrank significantly, except for Spanish. Maintaining the first place was French, which was studied by 50% of students in 1984, but this figure then halved by 2007. German experienced a similar decline in popularity among students. This language was chosen by 20% of the students in 1984 and then dropped to around 15% after a period of 23 years. Spanish, by contrast, was the only language in the top three that became more popular: the percentage of learners doubled from only 5% of learners in 1983 to 10% in 2007.