Learning another language can be challenging, but is incredibly rewarding in an increasingly globalized world, not to mention the mental acuity practicing a language provides.

According to the Eton Institute, “the benefits of learning a new language include higher scores on standardized exams in math, reading comprehension and vocabulary by multilingual students compared to the scores of monolingual students.”

With almost 7000 languages in existence, we decided to investigate the diversity of offerings at Oak Park High School and across Ventura County.

From our calculations (shown in the graph), the average of languages taught per school in Ventura County is 2.8 — OPHS is above this average with 4 languages. Another aspect that distinguishes Oak Park is the choice to learn Chinese, with only 25 percent of total schools in the county including that option.

In overwhelming popularity, Spanish has proven to be the most offered language —100 percent of Ventura County schools offer it. This may be in correlation to the second-largest demographic in Ventura County being those of Hispanic or Latino descent.