Who inspired you
to learn
languages?
A survey conducted by the European Commission’s
Directorate General for Interpretation (May-July 2012)
Report on responses from
English native speakers
Interpretation
Aims of the survey
The main aim of this survey was simple: in order to target our future language-learning campaigns
more effectively, we wanted to find out who young people listen to when they decide to learn
languages. In particular we were interested in learning who influences native speakers of English to
study foreign languages, as we are committed to safeguarding the next generation of English
language interpreters.
For each foreign language acquired, the survey asked participants basic information and required
them to rank from 1-5 the following potential influencers: school system, mother, father,
grandmother, grandfather, teacher, own interests, other. For second and third language acquisition
we changed teacher to ‘teacher/university tutor’ and included the option ‘careers adviser’. If a
language was compulsory at school, respondents were asked to rank the school system as '5'.
We asked participants to indicate the languages they knew from among the 23 official EU languages
that we provide interpretation into and from. We also included Arabic, Chinese and Russian as
possible options because this served our interests. All other languages were covered with the option
‘other’.
A word on the sample and scale
Our sample was self-selecting, primarily drawn from our Facebook friends, who already have a higher
than average interest in languages. We were interested in people's perceptions of who influenced
them. All values taken from our results are therefore relative and not absolute.
We opened the survey to all of our Facebook fans and publicised it online and via our partner
organisations. We received 2289 responses in total.
This report will focus on the results given by English native speakers who were educated in the EU,
which amounts to 831 responses.
Comments
Over half the English native speakers in our sample provided comments giving us extra detail about
factors that influenced their language learning.
These comments have been read and sorted according to topic, and are available in the
accompanying document, 'Comments from English native speakers.'
Overall influences on first foreign language
The average scores accorded to each influencer by the 831 respondents with English mother tongue
were as follows:
Influencer
Average score out of 5
1. School
system
2. Own interests
3. Teacher
4. Mother
5. Father
6. Other
3.11
2.9
2.4
2.17
2.13
7. Grandmother
1.6
8. Grandfather
1.55
4.47
We see that the school system is nearly twice as influential as parents, and own interests rank
highly as a factor. Teachers are seen to be more influential than family members on a young
person’s decision to learn their first foreign language.
Below is a graphical presentation of these results:
For the purposes of comparative analysis, the responses were divided according to the age of the
learner when they began learning their first language, and to the language learned in each instance.
1) Influencers on first foreign language acquisition by age
Nearly half the respondents (43.56%) said that they began learning a foreign language between the
ages of 11 and 13, which means at the start of their secondary school career. Most students in the
UK traditionally start learning a foreign language in school at this age.
The school system was the biggest influencer overall.
The relatively high influence of the school system among the 0-5 group reflects the fact that
children in Ireland begin learning the Irish language as soon as they start their education (53.14% of
English native speakers who began learning a foreign language before the age of 5 responded that
this language was Irish).
Only among those who began learning a foreign language late in their education, between the ages
of 14 to 16, were 'own interests' ranked higher on the scale of influence than the school system.
People in this category scored own interests very highly, at 4.57 on average, which is striking in the
line graph above.
The influence of the mother was seen to be greater than that of the father, grandmother and
grandfather, whose influence declined in that order across every starter age group.
While father, grandfather and grandmother never made it into the top 5 influencers of the individual
starter age groups, mother ranked in the top 5 influencers across every beginner age group.
According to average score achieved, mother was the fourth greatest influencer on the first four age
groups, and the fifth greatest influencer on the over 14s. Over a quarter (26.6%) of those who began
learning a language before the age of 5 years ranked their mother as a top influencer of level 5
importance. The older the child, the less influence the mother exerted on language learning.
Among the 6-8 group, the percentage of those ranking 'mother' as a top influencer had fallen to
17.6%; it fell again to 13.9% when the child was aged 9-10, and only 7.7% from the 11-13 age group
ranked their mother as a top influencer.
Even those who began learning a language before the age of 5 ranked ‘own interests’ highly as an
influencer, 28.0% of them ranking it as a top influencer of level 5 importance. Own interests was
ranked higher as the age of the child increased, achieving an average of 3.23/5 in the 11-13 age
group. A massive 71.43% of those who began learning a language after the age of 14 ranked their
own interests as a top influencer. This is in keeping with what we expected. However, only 7
respondents (0.84% of English native speakers) began learning a foreign language so late, so the
conclusions we can draw from such a small sample are limited.
Apart from mother, teacher was the only person who qualified as a top 5 influencer in any of the
starter age groups.
In fact, teacher scored higher than mother across every starter age group, and was ranked as a top
influencer by over a quarter of all those who began learning a language before the age of 11. Of
those who began learning a foreign language in the 0-5 age group, 28.5% ranked teacher as a top
influencer. The percentage ranking teacher as a top influencer fell to 25.6% in the 6-8 group but
then rose back up to 27.7% for those who began learning a language aged 9-10. Among those who
began learning in the first few years of secondary school, aged 11-13, teachers exerted less influence
(average score 2.77; 20.7% said they were a top influencer). However, these scores were still high
enough to make teachers the third biggest influencer among this age group. Teachers slipped to the
fourth greatest influencer for the 14-16 starter group, but 28.57% of the small sample still regarded
them as the top influencer (5/5), the same percentage as among the 0-5 age group!
As the statistics show, other and own interests represent significant influencers on every age group,
and the comments given by the majority of respondents help us to discover what these
miscellaneous influencers were. Please refer to the ‘Comments from English native speakers’
document for more details.
2) Influencers on first foreign language acquisition by language learned
The following pie chart shows the distribution of languages acquired by English native speaker
respondents as a first foreign language:
Building on this, the table below gives statistics for the top 5 languages acquired:
Language
French
Irish
German
Other (not EU official,
Russian, Arabic or Chinese)
Spanish
% of native English speakers
who learned it as their first
foreign language
62.94
15.88
Number of respondents
523
132
10.47
87
3.61
3.37
30
28
The school system was again the most influential factor across all the first foreign languages
learned.
Teachers were seen to be much more influential on learners of Irish (average score 3.49) than on
any other language. This substantiates our finding that teachers exert a greater influence on younger
pupils, since we know that the Irish learners begin their language acquisition at a very young age.
The average score for teachers across French, German, Spanish and Other was 2.78. Interestingly,
the average influence of teachers on learners of 'other' languages was slightly higher than this, at
2.83. This implies that non-EU official languages are being taught in UK schools. The most likely root
of this result would be the Welsh language, taught to pupils at schools in Wales from a young age. In
the comments we received, 14 people mentioned the Welsh language, some claiming that the
experience of being bilingual encouraged them to learn other languages and meant that they found it
easier to do so (see Comments document).
Both mother and father made it into the top 5 influencers on first foreign language acquisition of
French, Irish, German and 'other' languages. By contrast, fathers were only the sixth most influential
factor on learners of Spanish, scoring an average of just 1.89 compared with the average of 2.27
across the other four languages. Learners of 'other' languages were the most influenced by their
fathers (average score 2.73), followed by learners of Irish who gave their father an average score of
2.45.
For learners of 'other' languages as well as for German, fathers were ranked as more influential
than mothers overall. However, mothers were considerably more influential than fathers on
children's decisions to learn French and Irish. For French, mothers scored an average of 2.42
compared to 2.11 for fathers; for Irish, the averages were 2.63 and 2.45 respectively.
Own interests were the biggest influencer on learners of German and Spanish after the school
system, indicating that students tend to choose these languages based on their own personal
reasons. Again, the comments section sheds some light on this. Learners of German did not rank
their parents as very influential – the average scores were 1.80 for fathers and 1.72 for mothers.
Overall influences on second foreign language
Influencer
1. Own interests
2. School system
3. Teacher/University Tutor
4. Other
5. Mother
6. Father
7. Careers adviser
8. Grandmother
9. Grandfather
Average score out of 5
3.87
3.71
2.94
2.24
2.14
2.02
1.48
1.36
1.34
When it comes to learning a second foreign language, the pupil’s own interests become more
influential than the school system. This indicates that there is some flexibility in the language
curriculum that we could further investigate when seeking to influence young people.
‘Other’ gained 0.12 points on average compared to its score for first foreign language, and because
‘mother’ slipped by 0.26 on average it became the fourth most influential factor.
We note with interest that careers advisers scored very poorly as influencers on the choice of every
language. As the table above shows, they were ranked as substantially less influential than parents
and only slightly more influential than grandparents over a student’s decision to study a second
foreign language. Despite the fact that 16.73% of respondents were aged 14-16 and 17.45% aged 17
or over when they began learning a second foreign language, only 1.22% of respondents ranked
careers adviser as a top influencer. There was also a notable lack of reference to careers advisers in
the comments we received from respondents. This indicates that in general young people are not
turning to careers advisers for language advice.
The graph below illustrates that the average scores given to the top three influencers are much
closer for second foreign language than they were for first foreign language. The student’s own
interests and the school system exert almost equal influence, with teachers/tutors not too far
behind.
The average age of respondents when they began second foreign language study was, predictably,
greater than it was at the start of second foreign language acquisition. Only 2.05% of respondents
began learning a second foreign language before the age of 5, whereas 57.64% of respondents
started in the first three years of secondary school (aged 11-13, i.e. shortly after the majority began
learning a first foreign language). With the ages so unevenly distributed, it was more pertinent to
classify the results by language learned rather than by age, and we present this data below.
Languages acquired by English native speakers as a second foreign language
The most commonly cited second foreign languages were still those most commonly taught in
schools: German, Spanish and French.
Language
German
Spanish
French
Italian
Other (not EU official, Russian, Arabic or
Chinese)
% score out of all
native
English
speakers
38.87
24.67
23.95
4.69
3.97
Number of
respondents
323
205
199
39
33
The pie chart shows that German was by far the most popular second foreign language. Of those
who learned French as their first foreign language, 51.63% went on to learn German as a second
foreign language while 32.5% did Spanish instead.
The general trend is that teachers and tutors were slightly more influential when these languages
were chosen as second foreign languages than when they were learned as first foreign languages.
Overall, 25.27% of English native speakers ranked teachers/tutors as a top influencer on their
decision to study a second foreign language. This is slightly higher than the 24.55% who considered
teachers the top influencer on their acquisition of a first foreign language. Teachers scored an
average of 2.79 over a student's decision to study French as a first foreign language, but 3.02 when
French was studied as a second foreign language. For German, the statistics are 2.80 and 2.98
respectively, and for Spanish, 2.71 vs. 3.10.
Among the 4.69% of native English speakers who learned Italian as a second foreign language, a
mammoth 74.36% ranked 'own interests' as a top influencer, meaning that it scored an average of
4.54/5. Learners of Spanish as a second foreign language also ranked 'own interests' very highly as
an influencer, giving it an average of 4.32.
The results show that those who were the most influenced by their mothers at the time of first
foreign language acquisition continued to be more influenced by them than average at the time of
second foreign language acquisition. For example, the average influence accorded to mothers over
second foreign language by people who learned Irish as their first foreign language was 2.32, which is
higher than the average score for mother of 2.12.
Overall influences on third foreign language
The section on third foreign language was optional rather than compulsory in our survey, as a
thorough understanding of two foreign languages is a minimum requirement to become an EU
interpreter. It also corresponds to the EU’s target of each citizen being able to communicate in two
languages in addition to his own.
The number of EU-educated native English speakers in our sample who replied that they knew a
third foreign language was 594, or 71.48%, a highly encouraging figure.
The influencers on third foreign language acquisition were ranked as follows:
Influencer
Own interests
Other
Teacher
School system
Mother
Father
Careers adviser
Grandmother
Grandfather
Average score out of 5
4.56
2.74
2.55
2.2
1.88
1.76
1.75
1.34
1.34
Own interests are now the main driving force for foreign language acquisition by quite some
distance. The school system drops into fourth place and loses 1.51 points on average. Careers
advisers gain 0.27 points on average but are still less influential than parents, while ‘other’ gains 0.5
points on average to become the second most influential factor.
The following table shows the languages acquired by English native speakers as a third foreign
language. As we would expect, a wider variety of languages were cited than for first and second
foreign languages. It is interesting to note, for example, that 2.53% of native English speakers (21
people) learned Chinese as a third foreign language.
Language
Spanish
Italian
German
OTHER
Russian
French
Portuguese
Chinese
Dutch
Swedish
Arabic
Irish
Greek
Polish
Czech
Danish
Finnish
Bulgarian
Croatian
Estonian
Hungarian
Latvian
Slovene
% score out of all native
English speakers
Number of respondents
28.11%
167
20.20%
120
14.81%
88
8.08%
48
7.41%
44
4.55%
27
4.38%
26
3.54%
21
2.02%
12
1.35%
8
1.01%
6
1.01%
6
0.84%
5
0.67%
4
0.34%
2
0.34%
2
0.34%
2
0.17%
1
0.17%
1
0.17%
1
0.17%
1
0.17%
1
0.17%
1
Below, the same data are displayed in pie chart format:
The influence of teachers was still ranked highly for learners of German (2.92 average), Spanish
(2.63), and Italian (2.48), and quite highly for ‘other’ languages (2.15). The score for teachers of
Russian, however, was just 1.23. Own interests, by contrast, scored a very high average influence of
4.73 out of 5 among learners of Russian.
Some Conclusions
•
The school system is the most influential factor on learners of foreign languages. Even
among very young children, it is more influential than parents.
•
The younger the child, the more influential the parents, especially mothers.
•
Teachers are consistently influential on young peoples' decisions to learn languages. This
was corroborated by the comments we received, as 87 people (17.98%) stated that teachers
or tutors had encouraged or inspired them to learn foreign languages.
•
When languages are taught from a young age, teachers are more influential on students'
decisions.
•
Students are not currently being influenced to learn languages by careers advisers. An
investigation of the reasons for this could be another project. At the present juncture,
careers advisers should not represent a key target group for our communication.
•
‘Own interests’ and ‘other’ frequently equate to holidays and travel (19.5%) and interest in
foreign cultures (10.83%) according to the comments we received.