The given diagrams illustrate the ratio of 14-to-16 students learning a foreign language in a country whose mother tongue is English and the top 3 languages were chosen to learn in 1984 and 2007.
Overall, the percentage of female learners was substantially higher than males in both 1984 and 2007, and French was students’ top priority in these years.
Looking at the first chart, in 1984, while girls’ percentage levelled off at nearly 50%, boys’ proportion was approximately 20% lower. 23 years later, girls who took part in studying foreign languages declined significantly to 40%, while there was a slight fall of 5% to 25% only in boys.
Regarding the below graph, while the percentage of French learners reached its peak at 50% in 1984, German and Spanish stood at 20% and about 5% respectively, which was 30% and 45% lower than French. Besides, in 2007, French still stood at the highest position, followed by German and Spanish. In that year, although there was a notable decline of the ratios of French and German, Spanish rose minimally to 10%.