The Transatlantic Divide in Language Learning

The benefits of learning a foreign language are extensive and go way beyond the ability to converse with people from other countries. Speaking a second language broadens the horizon, takes the guesswork out of restaurant orders on vacation and even makes the Super Bowl Halftime Show more enjoyable. It has professional benefits as well, as multilingualism is a much sought-after skill in today's globalized world. Even though you can get by pretty well speaking only English, learning a second, or third, language is always going to be worth it.

While learning foreign languages is ubiquitous in Europe, where most students start learning English as early as primary school, the story in the U.S. is completely different. Most European countries have a national-level mandate for studying languages at school but such standards are non-existent on the other side of the Atlantic where such legislation only exists at school district or state-level, if at all.

According to the National K-12 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey conducted by the Americans Councils for International Education, less than 20 percent of K-12 students in the U.S. were enrolled in foreign language classes in 2014/15, the latest available data. This is a far cry from the enrollment rates seen across Europe, as Eurostat data shows. Many European countries have enrollment rates close to 100 percent, with an average of 91 percent of primary and secondary school students learning at least one foreign language across the European Union. More than one in three students in the EU even study two or more foreign languages, showing that many student learn more than "just" English.

While English is by far the most widely taught foreign language across Europe, Spanish is the most popular second language in the U.S. Of the 10.6 million students enrolled in a foreign language class in 2014/2015, 7.4 million studied Spanish and 1.3 million learned French.