Fewer school students choose to study a foreign language than in the past.

In many countries fewer and fewer students choose a foreign language at school. There are several reasons for this, and schools can do a lot to change the situation.

The first reason is that everybody learns English, and many students think this is enough. They see that English is used in films, in business and on the internet, so they ask themselves why they should also learn French or German.

The second reason is that languages are difficult and slow. In mathematics a student can see his progress after one month, but in a language he studies for two years and still cannot speak with a real person. This is very demotivating, especially for teenagers.

Another reason is grades. Many students say that it is easier to get a high mark in other subjects, and because their university application depends on marks, they choose the easier subject.

Schools could change this in several ways. First, they should give more hours. Two lessons a week are not enough for anybody, so schools should organise intensive courses or extra clubs where students hear the language every day.

Second, lessons should be more practical. If students speak with real people online, watch films or cook a recipe in the foreign language, they understand why they are learning it, and it is much more interesting than grammar exercises from a book.

In conclusion, students avoid languages because English seems enough and because progress is slow and grades are low, but more intensive and more practical lessons could make the subject attractive again.

Uptake of foreign languages has fallen sharply in many school systems. The reasons are largely rational responses to how the subject is organised, which means schools have more control over the outcome than is often assumed.

The first reason is the perceived sufficiency of English. Students observe that international communication, entertainment and much of the internet operate in English, and if they already speak it — or are learning it as their compulsory foreign language — a second one appears to add little.

The second and more damaging reason concerns visible progress. Languages return very little for the first several years: a student can work conscientiously for two years and remain unable to sustain a conversation, whereas comparable effort in most other subjects produces something they can demonstrate. Adolescents are unusually sensitive to feeling incompetent in front of peers, and a subject that guarantees that feeling for a prolonged period is easy to drop.

Grading compounds this. Where language examinations are marked more severely than other options, students whose university applications depend on results are making a sensible calculation when they choose elsewhere, and no amount of encouragement outweighs it.

Schools can respond in three ways. The most important is intensity: two short lessons weekly cannot produce competence, and concentrating the same total hours — through immersion days, intensive blocks, or teaching another subject partly in the language — yields far more from the same allocation.

Assessment should also reward communication rather than accuracy alone, since a student able to be understood while making errors has achieved the actual purpose. Finally, the language needs a use beyond the examination: correspondence with a partner school, video calls, or projects requiring real information from foreign sources give it a point that a textbook cannot.

In conclusion, students are avoiding languages because progress is slow, grading is harsh and English appears sufficient. Schools can address the first two directly.

The decline in language uptake is usually treated as a loss of curiosity. It is better understood as students correctly reading the incentives a school places in front of them — and once the causes are described that way, it becomes clear that most of them are within a school's power to change.

The first cause is the perceived sufficiency of English. Students observe that international business, research and entertainment operate substantially in one language, and the inference that a second is optional is not unreasonable. What it overlooks — that the advantage of English accrues to native speakers and that competing internationally often means competing against people with three languages — is not visible to a fifteen-year-old choosing options.

The second cause is the shape of the learning curve, and it is the decisive one. Languages return almost nothing for a long initial period: two years of conscientious work commonly leaves a student unable to sustain an ordinary conversation, because useful proficiency sits behind a threshold that thin weekly instruction takes years to approach. Meanwhile a comparable effort in history or chemistry produces something demonstrable within weeks. Adolescents are also acutely averse to appearing incompetent in front of peers, and speaking practice guarantees exactly that experience repeatedly — a subject could hardly be better designed to be abandoned.

Grading then makes dropping it rational rather than merely tempting. Where language examinations are marked more severely than the alternatives, and where university admission depends on grades, a student choosing another subject is responding sensibly to the system as it is. Exhortation cannot compete with that arithmetic, which is why campaigns to promote languages have achieved so little.

What schools can change follows directly. The first and most consequential is intensity. The same annual hours delivered in concentrated blocks, immersion days, or by teaching another subject partly through the language produce results that two forty-minute periods cannot, because they carry students past the threshold at which the language becomes usable — and usefulness is what sustains motivation thereafter.

The second is assessment. If marking rewards communication rather than accuracy alone, a student who is understood despite errors is credited with what they have actually achieved, and the subject stops punishing the risk-taking that learning requires. Aligning severity with comparable subjects removes the grade penalty that drives rational avoidance.

The third is purpose. A language studied only for an examination has no evidence of its own value; one used to correspond with a partner school, to conduct a video call, or to research something genuinely unavailable in translation demonstrates it directly. Students do not need persuading that languages are valuable — they need to experience being able to use one, which is precisely what the current configuration prevents.