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English makes adolescents less motivated to learn a new language

Source: EurekAlert, Public release date: 2-Apr-2012

Swedish adolescents' desire to learn a foreign language besides English, which they start learning relatively early, has been declining for a long time. A new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that one factor behind this trend may be that English is used as a resource when students learn French, Spanish and German.

Fewer and fewer adolescents study foreign languages in English-speaking countries such as the USA and the UK. They simply do not want to, since as a world language English can be used just about everywhere. In Sweden, the government has introduced incentives to learn foreign languages in addition to English in the school system. Read more...