In 2015, almost 19 million primary school pupils (or 84% of all the pupils at this level) in the European Union (EU) were studying at least one foreign language, including 1 million (around 5%) who were studying two foreign languages or more, says an Eurostat report released on European Commission Day of Languages celebrated on September 26.

This led me to the thought of collecting data concerning our students’ quest for languages.

English was by far the most popular language, studied by 17.5 million pupils (83.5% of the primary school population). French (0.8 million or 4.8%) ranked second, German came third (almost 0.7 million or 3.9%), followed by Spanish (0.1 million or 0.6%), Russian (54 thousand or 0.3%) and Italian (33 thousand or 0.2%).

All or nearly all pupils at primary level in 2015 attended foreign language classes in Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta and Austria (all 100%), Croatia (99.9%), Spain (99.4%), and France (99.2%), as well as in Italy (98.6%), Romania (98.3%) and Poland (97.6%). The EU average share stood at 84.3%.

Pupils in Luxembourg (83.7%) were studying two or more foreign languages followed, but also in Estonia (30.7%) and Greece (28.9%).

On the opposite side, less than half of primary school pupils were studying a foreign language in Portugal (35.4%), Belgium (36.7%), the Netherlands (42.9%) and Slovenia (49.8%) two years ago.

English is the most common foreign language studied at primary level in every EU Member State, except for Belgium and Luxembourg, which are both multilingual countries.

The second most common foreign language position is shared between German and French. German, which is the most learnt foreign language in Luxembourg, was the second main foreign language studied by primary school pupils in eight other Member States, with the highest shares of learners recorded in Croatia (20.9%) and Hungary (20.2%). French was the second most studied foreign language in seven EU Member States, mostly in Luxembourg (83.5%), Greece (15.8%) and Romania (15.2%).

According to a Euro barometer survey on attitudes to Multilanguage, nearly half of Romanians say they can
converse in another language. English is the foreign language that Romanians speak most, followed by French, German and Spanish. In recent years Romanians have progressed in language learning, especially young people, although teachers recognize that the Romanian education system has to make some changes.

Beyond the statistics and polls, it is obvious that in recent years the language learning has become important for many Romanians.

Over 95% of Romanian secondary school students study at least two foreign languages.

All lower secondary school students (100%) in Romania learn at least one foreign language and 95.2% of them learn two or more languages, these being among the highest shares in the European Union, according to a Euro report.

Under 60% of the 17.6 million lower secondary school pupils in the EU were studying two or more foreign languages in 2015, with Luxembourg (100%), Finland (98.4%), Italy (95.8%), Estonia (95.4%), and Romania (95.2%) having the highest shares.

In contrast, fewer than 10% of pupils were studying two or more foreign languages in Hungary (6%) and Austria (8.8%), according to data from EU’s statistical office Euro stat.

Romania had almost 775,000 lower secondary school pupils in 2015, and 95.2% of them were studying two or more foreign languages. The most common language among Romanian pupils was English (99.5% of them studying this language), followed by French (83.6%).

In the EU, English was also the most the most popular language at lower secondary level, being studied by nearly 17 million pupils (97.3%). French (5 million or 33.8%) came second, followed by German (3 million or 23.1%), and Spanish (2 million or 13.6%).

More than 9 in 10 corporate Romanians communicate well in foreign languages

All schools in Romania have foreign language programs. Students must study at least one language to an advanced level and a second one at a more basic level. In other cases there are more than two foreign languages available to study and the student can choose from several. Many schools also offer bilingual courses.

During the communist period, the main language taught was Russian and German was the second most common. Nowadays things have changed and the school curriculum is very different.

According to the results of 2008’s “Key Data on Teaching Languages at Schools in Europe” published by The Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), the top language taught in Romania nowadays is English. Some fortunate children start to learn it in kindergarten but usually public schools have a language program which starts in second grade. The explanation is simple: as we can see on the World Language Map, English is very popular all around the world and nowadays it is necessary to have at least a basic command of the language. Furthermore, according to the cited study, the second most popular language is French and the third is German. Italian and Spanish are the next most commonly taught languages.

There is a wide variety of options available and many kids choose a specialized public school or high school because they want to study a certain language and they then continue to learn it throughout the curriculum. In the areas highly populated with minority groups, languages like Hungarian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Slovak, Czech or Croatian are taught too. They do not necessarily classify as foreign languages in these circumstances, as they are available as a result of the structure of society. Nevertheless, it seems to be the case that all changes in society lead to changes in the learning process. If you were to ask a young Romanian man something in English you would definitely get an answer. This is less likely to happen amongst the older generation of Romanians, as English was not as much of an integral part of the curriculum when they were in formal education.

All in all, even if surveys show that Romanians compared to other European citizens do not use foreign languages so often, facts show that there has been done a step forward in increasing people’s interest in foreign languages.

Bibliography/Webography

Irina Popescu, Romania insider