The two bar charts illustrate how the percentage of students aged 14 to 16 years learning a foreign language in an English-speaking country changed between 1987 and 2007. The top three languages studied are also presented.
Overall, there were fewer students studying a foreign language in 2007. The proportion of female students learning another language declined more significantly than that of male students. In terms of the language learnt, French was the most popular foreign language, followed by German and Spanish, but the difference in percentages between these 3 languages were narrowed.
In 1984, nearly half of the girls studied a foreign language, compared to only one-third of boys. However, the percentage of female pupils learning foreign languages decreased by 10%, while the proportion of boys had only decreased by 5% to about a quarter in 2007.
French was very popular in 1984, with half of the students studying this language. Although German was the second most popular, there were only 20% of students choosing to learn, and the percentage of students taking Spanish was around 5%. The rankings were the same in 2007, but French lost its popularity because the proportion of adolescents preferring French dropped drastically from 50% to 25%. There were also fewer students studying German as well, with a 5% drop compared to 1984. In contrast, more pupils were interested in learning Spanish, with 10% of them choosing this language in 2007.