Some of Paul's schoolmates learn two languages—English and French. So does Paul. As an Englishman, Paul can also speak German and Spanish. So, do you think the British people are very good language learners? The fact is that they aren't.
The survey done by the European Commission (欧盟委员会) showed that 62% of the British people only speak English. 38% speak at least one foreign language and 18% speak two or more. Compared with the British people, 56% of the people in other European countries speak at least one foreign language and 28% speak two or more. From this you can see that the British people are famous for not speaking foreign languages and that they are not good language learners in Europe.
And the survey also showed that English is the most widely-spoken foreign language. Many European people can have a conversation in English. That's why British people don't think it is necessary to learn a foreign language.
In Britain, students are not required to learn a foreign language. That means at school learning a foreign language is only anoption. In UK schools it is common for children to start learning a foreign language at 11 and many of them give it up at 14. So why don't students continue learning foreign languages at school? Because they think it is more difficult to get good results in languages than in other subjects such as science or history.
To solve this problem, the British government is looking for different ways to improve language learning at school. One way is to start learning it at a much younger age. Another one is to give school children more choices.
Changing the British attitude(态度) to learning foreign languages may be a hard task but the government decides to have a try!
