For the third consecutive year, state matura exams in Albania have shown that young people speak foreign languages better than their native language.

Education experts say that an increasing number of university students are facing difficulties in writing essays or academic papers due to their limited knowledge of the Albanian language.

“This should serve as a wake-up call to encourage children to speak, articulate, write, and read. It is not concerning to me that we have less stellar final grades in exams, but the fact that young people are forgetting how to speak Albanian correctly,” says education expert Irida Sina to Euronews Albania.

It all stems from childhood. The lack of communication and spending hours on social media networks is leading to the deterioration of the Albanian language.

“A significant impact is on those children who spend a long time on social networks and have brief communication with each other. They spend so much time on social networks, and the content they are exposed to is offered in English, which causes the Albanian language to diminish. Their vocabulary will always have fewer words. We can observe this even in first grade pupils, as they struggle to form complex sentences,” Sina further says.

Foreign languages, mainly English, serve young people who choose universities outside of Albania.

According to education experts, this is also a motivation for young people if they want to pursue their careers abroad.