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The two bar charts illustrate the percentage of pupils aged between 14 and
16 who learnt a foreign language in one English speaking nation and the top
three common foreign languages, respectively, in two separate years, 1984
and 2007.

Overall, more girls studied another language apart from the native one than
boys, whilst French remained the most popular foreign language chosen by
students during the research period.

In terms of the proportion of 14-to-16-year-old foreign language learners in

1984, it was nearly 50% for girls, as opposed to 30% for boys. Over the
following 23 years, there were substantial declines in the percentage of
billingual girls and boys, to 40% and approximately 25%, respectively.

With the respect to the most prevalent foreign language adopted, French
ranked first in both years, despite a remarkable drop from 50% to roughly
25% in the rate of registration. Likewise, witnessing a fall of approximately
10% to well over 10% in 2007, the figure for German stayed unchanged as
the second most popular foreign language. Conversely, despite experiencing
a doubled increase from roughly 5% to 10% over a 23-year-period, the
proportion of students engaging in Spanish courses ranked third.