MINISTERS came under fresh pressure today to tackle the steep drop in pupils taking French and German at school, after a poll found more than 90% of adults want their children to learn a language.
Eight out of 10 Britons said they wished they could speak a foreign language better, according to the survey by exam board OCR which coincided with European Day of Languages today.
Right across Britain, more than 90% said they thought learning a language was an important part of a child's education.
The findings come after last month's GCSE results revealed what was described as a "catastrophic" decline in exam entries for French and German, down 14.4% and 13.7% respectively.
Blame
John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, blamed the decline on the Government's decision to make studying languages at GCSE optional.
He said he hoped the poll's findings would force ministers to take the issue seriously and review their policy.
"I have written to the minister calling for a review of Government policy which has caused a rapid down-turn in the number of 14 and 15 year-olds taking modern languages," he said.
"We have always been poor at learning languages in this country.
World language
"It is time we stopped falling back on the assurance that English is a world language so we don't need to learn other people's languages.
"As a trading nation we want to be much better at languages."
Isabella Moore, director of Cilt, the national centre for languages, said Britain needed fluent linguists.
"Employers want evidence of good communication skills, confidence and outward-looking attitudes, so a language qualification is an important addition to anyone's CV," she said.
"We would encourage everyone to develop their language skills and seek recognition for their achievements."
Tried
The poll also found that people living in the south-east were much more likely to have tried to learn a foreign language than those in the north.
In London, 78% had tried learning another language, compared to 65% in Wales and the Midlands and 61% in the West Country.
In Scotland 74% said they had tried learning another language and 78% wished they were fluent - below the national average of 82%.
A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: "Our approach is to encourage a love of language from an early age which is why we are building capacity at primary school level.
"Every primary school child will be learning a language by 2010."
He added: "At secondary school level we already have 218 specialist language colleges and we are looking to create a total of 400 to champion languages and work with other local schools to teach them."
Do you wish you could speak a foreign language? Have your say.
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You can bet your bottom dollar that ruth kelly's offspring are learning a second language at their private schools and that phoney and chairs are also taking a second language at their inner city comp oops I mean tax deductable private school as for the serfdom well our children will get taught just enough for literacy but not enough to challenge the current govt.
the chance to learn a second language is one of the best chances you get at school. the people of today not learning other language because everywhere else speaks english is just lazy. learning a language can be be fun and exciting and often come along with visiting that country. it also opens people up to a greater range of jobs being able to communicate with over sea's land. i think that once again you should have to learn a language at GCSE level and that it is a great idea for primary school children to start learning a language.
I live and work in Sweden where pretty much everybody speaks English pretty well. The difference between Sweden and the UK from what I can see is that English language is compulsory from eight years old until school leaving age. The big advantage Sweden has is that many programms on TV are shown in English, with or without English subtitles.
If local schools do not offer language classes, in I guess French, German or sometimes Spanish, there are plenty of evening classes available outside school which provide language training.