The English have always had a terrible reputation when it comes to learning languages. Think of the stereotype of the sunburnt Brit abroad butchering ‘ una cerveza, por favor ,’ or P. G. Wodehouse’s description of the ‘shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.’

It appears, however, that our monolingualism is worse than ever, at least in schools. New data has revealed that a third of state sixth-forms in England do not have a single person studying French, German or Spanish A-level – in the West Midlands the rate was as high as 47 per cent. The requirement to study a language at GCSE level was scrapped in 2004, and since then entries have plummeted: the number of pupils taking French GCSE has dropped by two thirds in two decades.

Yet today’s teenage

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