The bar charts illustrate how many 14-16-year-old students learned a modern foreign language in a particular English-speaking country, and the three most popular foreign languages studied by them in 1984 and 2007.
Overall, girls were the most common foreign language learners in both years, with boys lagging significantly behind. Notably, despite the substantial decrease throughout, French accounted for the highest figures in both years, whereas Spanish recorded the lowest shares.
Regarding the categories of students, girls dominated the chart, making up roughly a half at the outset, followed by a considerable decline by nine percentage points in 2007. The figure for boys began at 30% in 1984, before plummeting to nearly 25% at the end of the timeframe.
As for the top three languages, French exhibited the highest figures over the period. Although the figure exhibited a downward trajectory from 1984 and onwards, French still remained the most preferred language in both years. This was distantly followed by German and Spanish, at 20% and around 5% in 1984, and 15% and 10% by 2007, respectively. The latter, though was an outlier in that it exhibited an upward trajectory, constituted the lowest shares in both years.