The bar charts compare the proportion of 14-16 year-old students who engaged in studying foreign language in English-speaking nations and the three most chosen languages over the years 1984 to 2007.
Overall, there is a downward trend in the percentage of students pursuing foreign languages study. Similarly, the chart of top three languages indicates a decline, conversely, Spanish registers an increase among the other two languages.
In 1984, approximately 57% of girls studied foreign languages compared to the boys who took up 30%. This gender disparity indicated a notable shift in 2007 as it dropped moderately to 40% and nearly 25%, respectively.
With regard to the three selected languages, French dominated the trend among students who decided to learn a new language throughout the mentioned period, 50% in 1984 but it experienced a marked decrease to about 25% in 2007. German declined slightly by 5% over the years, from 20% to 15%. Meanwhile, Spanish depicted a significant rise, from just around 5% in 1984 then doubled to 10% in 2007.