Here in Britain we are constantly being told that we are hopeless at foreign languages. Just last week there were reports that British companies are ignoring home-grown graduates for positions that require foreign language skills, and that European companies setting up in Britain have complained to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about the lack of British graduates with strong language skills.

When employers talk about the strong foreign language skills of our European neighbours, what they mean are strong English language skills. Of course, the German, French, Spanish and Dutch companies who complained to the FCO can find bilingual specialists in their own country – they have all learnt English from an early age.

English is the mandatory first foreign language in 13 of the EU's member states, but children usually opt for it even in countries where it is not mandatory. As a result, over 90% of children in European Union countries' schools learn English, and this figure is rising. But what about us here in Britain when it comes to choosing which foreign language to teach first? Things are not so clear-cut for us. Which is the best language to learn? Is Spanish more useful than French? Will teaching youngsters Mandarin Chinese improve their chances of finding a job in 10 years time? Who knows?

Apart from Ireland, the United Kingdom is the only EU country where learning a language at school is not compulsory. As a result, only 44% of school pupils took a modern language GCSE in 2009. The figures are even more dire at A-level; fewer than 5% of all A-level entrants sat a language exam last year. This explains why there is such a small pool of graduates able to speak a foreign language, and why foreign companies moving to Britain get frustrated. The reasons for this state of affairs are complex, but they have little to do with British children having poor language skills.

The introduction of school league tables have been blamed for the drop in languages uptake, with headteachers steering pupils away from so-called "difficult" subjects (which include modern languages) towards subjects where they are likely to get higher grades, thus boosting the school's league table position. The new government announced on 7 June that it was abandoning the new primary curriculum recommended by the past government, which would have made learning a foreign language compulsory from year 3. British industry's own attitude towards foreign languages is also thought to discourage school pupils from taking languages seriously; the practice of not paying a salary premium to staff with language skills is one example.

We may be at the bottom of the EU list when it comes to numbers of pupils learning a foreign language, but we are top of the EU list when it comes to the range of languages on offer in our schools. Nineteen European Union languages in total are taught somewhere in England and Wales, and that doesn't include Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic, Russian or Urdu, which are not EU languages but which are taught in many British schools. France is in second place, with 16 languages on offer, but countries usually lauded for their language skills, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Norway are near the bottom with between five and eight languages on offer in their schools. Why? Because they're too busy devoting all their efforts to English.

This diversity in language tuition available in Britain continues after school in the adult and continuing-education sectors. It's easier to learn a minority language in Britain than almost anywhere else. It's certainly easier to learn several disparate minority languages. City Lit in London offers 18 languages, including Catalan, Czech and Cornish. At Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning you can learn Polish, Turkish, Croatian and a dozen other foreign languages. You can sign up for Brazilian Portuguese in Birmingham, Danish in St Helens or Hungarian in Waltham Forest.

In language classes like these you will find people who had no interest in languages at school, but then they met a Polish girlfriend, or bought a holiday home in Italy, or fell in love with Russian literature or are learning for a myriad of other reasons. Their success at language learning (and sometimes at learning very difficult languages) may not bump up the GCSE and A-level rates, but it puts paid to the idea that Britons "don't do languages".