How long does it take to learn a language? The research suggests it takes between 400 and 2200 hours of study plus a lot of practice to learn a foreign language. In this post we’ll explore key variables. You’ll get clear on the nature of the task so that you can pace yourself realistically if you’re thinking of starting to learn a foreign language in 2023 or if you’ve been learning one for a while and wonder whether your targets are realistic and your progress typical.
In today’s fast-paced world, there’s lots of emphasis on instant gratification and overnight success. The world of language learning is no exception.
Publishers of language materials – whether books, audio-visual courses or apps put emphasis on quick results.
Language schools often do the same.
Let’s face it. The promise of speed sells.
Attaining fluency in a foreign language you’ve had to learn as an adult is one of the most satisfying achievements you could have. With such a wondrous prize, we want to be taken in by promises of fluency fast.
Language teachers and bloggers may be less focussed on the quick sell, but we too have a tendency to downplay the scale of the task that faces the novice language learner. Sometimes, it’s as if we’d prefer you not to ask “How long does it take to learn a language?”.
After all, we love languages and love what languages have brought us.
We want you to have the same.
In a world where so many people believe that they will never be able to communicate in a foreign language, we “language encouragers” don’t want to frighten the already very nervous horses.
We want you to get started all for your own good.
We point out the low-hanging fruit.
We point out the “hacks” to get you off up and running quickly and to sound more fluent.
Rightly so!
The sooner you can use a language to get basic things done the more your confidence and appetite will grow (we hope).
There comes a point, however, when reality bites.
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Everyone’s agreed that learning a language takes time and effort.
Just like so many of life’s most worthwhile things.
As the English saying goes: how long is a piece of string? The answer to the question “how quickly can I learn a language” depends on a number of variables: the two most obvious are the level you want to achieve and the language you want to study.
First, let’s look at level.
Foreign language fluency attainment levels and time estimates for reaching them
One of the most commonly used scales of language attainment is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which runs a scale from A1 (beginner) to C2 (mastery or proficiency).
In the US another widely used yardstick is the Interagency Language Roundtable Scale which runs from Level 0 (no proficiency) to level 5 (native/bilingual proficiency).
Some people may only want a “tourist” grasp of a language.
That’s A1 on the CEFR for Languages (maybe Level 0+/1 ILR).
If that’s the case, you maybe need 80 to 100 hours for a “tourist level” grasp.
If you are looking for either a “working knowledge” to “get by” in most concrete situations, you want to aim for A2 or B1. That’s ILR 1+/2.
Time estimates for getting there range about 200 to 400 hours (bottom of A2 to top of B1) or upper beginner/lower intermediate “working knowledge”.
A higher level of fluency – top B2 (upper intermediate) into C1 (advanced/operational proficiency) (ILR 2+ to 3+) is said to take 550 to 900 hours.
We’re giving hour ranges here because we’ve been looking at a band of attainment (e.g. somewhere in A2 to top of B1/upper beginner to mid intermediate) and because different educational bodies have given different estimates for the language(s) they are involved with.
What’s your target language?
The CEFR for Languages was developed mainly for European languages, most of which are members of the Indo-European language family.
Those are the languages that are English’s closest relations.
They have a distant common ancestor so share underlying structures. Much of the vocabulary has also developed from the same beginnings.
That’s obviously not the case for Indonesian or Swahili (though there are many recognisable international loan words in those languages, too).
A major determinant of the answer to the question “How long does it take to learn a language” is, then, how close that language is to English (and any other language that you already know well).
Languages vary in grammatical complexity (viewed from an English standpoint), so that some Indo-European languages are more difficult than others.
German or Icelandic are very close relatives of English but have much more complex grammar than English (or than their common relatives Swedish or Danish).
The Slavonic languages such as Russian and Polish are not brothers and sisters of English, but they are – like French or Italian – first cousins.
Nevertheless, the Slavonic lingos have a rather complicated case system and their verb system is in several ways rather different from what’s found further west.
Then there’s the whole issue of a language’s sound system. Are there strange new consonants to master (as in Arabic or Georgian)? Are there tones (Chinese, Thai)? Maybe the language even has clicks (Xhosa).
A different writing system will also complicate the task.
A new alphabet is one thing. The system’s the same as our Latin one, though.
You can learn the Russian or Greek alphabets in an afternoon, ok, maybe two.
Georgian, Armenian may take you a few days longer. But not many.
But the system may differ more significantly and so will take longer to learn.
Your language may have an “abjab” system (shows only consonants – the basis of the Arabic writing system), for example.
Most time-consumingly of all, it may use a “logographic” system where each character represents a word (Chinese, Cantonese…).
Taken together, the interplay of all these linguistic elements determine how objectively “hard” or “easy” your language is.
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The FSI Language Difficulty Ranking as a guide to how long it takes to learn a language
The Foreign Services Institute (the US State Department’s agency for training US diplomats) ranks languages by difficulty taking both the linguistic and cultural gap between English and the target language.
They use five categories.
Category I (languages similar to English) require 575-600 hours of study (or 23-24 weeks full- time). These are European Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish etc) and the Germanic ones (Danish, Swedish, Dutch/Afrikaans Norwegian – not German).
Category II requires 750 hours (30 weeks) and is just for German.
Category III (languages with linguistic or cultural difference with English) require 900 hours (36 weeks). Here there are three languages: Indonesian/Malaysian and Swahili.
Category IV (languages with significant linguistic or cultural difference with English) need 1100 hours (44 weeks). This is the largest category. It includes some Indo-European languages such as Icelandic (which I affectionately refer to as “German on speed”), Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech etc) or Greek.
It also includes the Finno-Ugric languages (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian), many African languages and Semitic ones (Hebrew, Amharic).
Then there are a host of Asian and African languages.
Category V (languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers) which require 2200 hours (88 weeks). Here there are five languages: Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean.
Not all languages are covered by the including two of mine, darn it!
For the record, putting my finger to the wind, I’d class Welsh in Category II and Basque in Category IV.
You may have noticed that the hour totals for the most popular European languages are lower than the CEFR.
This is maybe because the FSI Uses Interagency Language Roundtable scales for the proficiencies of reading and speaking only.
More time would be needed for other skills such as writing well, to say nothing of specialist translation or interpretation abilities.
The time estimates of the FSI table for the different categories are open to criticism, for example for not taking sufficient account of the maybe unrepresentative sample of learners typically on their courses or variations in methods.
There’s often debate around which languages belong in which category, as well.
All the same, it’s generally accepted that you’re looking at roughly one or two thousand hours investment to get to C1 level in a foreign language.
Time and language are not the only variables, of course.
Let’s have a quick look at three other important ones.
Methods can make a difference to how long it takes to learn a language
Method matters, but mainly in a negative way. If you’re using a bad method it could really slow you down. So, I spend a good deal of time thinking about methods on this site – and will do more in future.
You should try out different methods to find out, first hand, what works for you.
When you find something that seems to work, though, just don’t chop and change too much.
Persistence in something – anything – which involves good input and output practice is more important than the perfect or even optimal method.
Here’s the thing, though: while there are various good methods out there, there’s no one, magic method that’s going to speed things up significantly.
If there was, we can be darned sure the FSI would be using it….
Don’t forget though that the FSI students are taught in very small groups (three or four) or one-to-one.
Whatever the method, you need to take responsibility for your own learning. Don’t rely just on large group classes or expect the teacher somehow to learn the language for you.
Do you have intensive or extensive study possibilities?
You may have great methods and teachers but there’s one advantage in the speed stakes that FSI students have one big advantage that you may not be able to replicate.
For them, learning language is a full-time job. They can devote their days to “intensive” study.
Think about it, though. If you do have the opportunity to study full-time FSI style, you could be at a very high level in the most difficult languages in just a year and a half.
That’s a wonderful short-term prize if you’re a student thinking of what to major in at college (most language majors don’t clock up so many hours, though – you’ll need to supplement your tuition during semester time and during the vacations).
It could be a dream come true if you’re somebody who is thinking of taking a career break in order to do some intensive, full-time language learning.
It may be just the new focus you need if your career is coming to an end and you’re thinking of learning a language as a retirement project.
The rest of us will need to forget about the FSI week totals and look at the total number of hours and spread them “extensively” across a longer period.
In a moment, we’ll do the sums.
First, a quick mention of aptitude and motivation.
How does individual aptitude affect the time it takes to learn a language
The bad news is that some people are better endowed than others with one or several of the abilities that help with language learning.
One piece good news is that even if we’re short in very useful abilities such as the ability to mimic accents or an above-average working memory, we’ll all have some predispositions we can bring to the party – social skills or a deep interest in the country, for example.
Another piece of good news is that some research shows that the further on with your language you get, the less innate ability differences matter.
Plus, some basic cognitive abilities can be trained and some improve with practice.
For more on this aspect, check out my post A talent for languages? Yes, no and what to do.
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Motivation and time taken to learn a language
Motivation is linked with interest which is linked with the ability to notice – which feeds into ability again. So motivation could affect how long it takes you to learn.
Motivation may be even more important than ability as you try to get fluent.
Motivation’s main – of course essential – contribution will be to determine whether or not you stay the course.
It won’t speed you up much, though.
With time on your side you can get fluent!
Unless you’re learning a language very closely related to one you already know (say Italian after Portuguese), there’s no getting round that it’s always going to take you one or two thousand hours of focussed effort to learn a new language well.
But hey, set against your life expectancy, that’s nothing!
Look at it this way:
Say you’re twenty-two years old. I’ll give you eight hours a day to sleep. That means you’ve got 338,720 hours to play with till you’re eighty.
Ok, I’ve ignored leap years and I’m not letting you earn a living, eat or go to the loo.
Nevertheless, you get the point: if you can’t find the time to get fluent in Arabic or Chinese, you obviously didn’t really want it badly enough.
Come to think of it, you’ve time to do 169 languages (@2000hrs each) 😉
How many years will it take me to learn a language when I’m working full-time?
Most of us can’t afford to take a year of two off for intensive language study, FSI-style.
Most of us do need to take toilet breaks.
We need to go back to those ball-park total hours figures.
We said we’d need 400 hours for a good working knowledge of, say, French Spanish or German.
Imagine you spend thirty minutes a day focussed effectively on your language.
We’ll give you a day off.
So, that’s three hours a week.
Progressing at that rate, you could clock up the 400 hours you need for a “good working knowledge” in just over 133 weeks.
That’s about two and a half years.
It’ll be less if you’ve already got a basis from school.
It’ll be even less if you’ve already learned another language.
It’ll be even less still if that other language is closely related to your first (e.g. you’re learning Italian after French or Dutch after German)).
Say you want to get to an advanced level in French or Spanish (C1).
This requires about 600 hours.
Say you put in three and a half hours a week. You could do this by studying thirty minutes every day, or thirty minutes each weekday, an hour on Saturday and Sunday off.
You’d have reached your goal of speaking French of Spanish at a high level in just over three years.
For German, requiring 750 hours, you’re looking at just over four years.
For Russian – at 1100 hours – it’s six years to fluency.
Remember, that’s to get to the heights of C1.
Most people are happy with a good B2 level and you’d be feeling real progress and enjoying using your language at a lower level much sooner.
Of course, if your goal is to reach the FSI’s estimated 2200 hours required for fluency in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic or Korean, at a pace of three hours a week you’re going to need fourteen years.
To me, that’s a rather demoralising time scale (though, come to think of it, I’ve been learning Russian, German and Welsh far longer than that).
To speed things up, how about some reverse engineering?
Say you set yourself the goal of becoming an advanced speaker of Chinese, Arabic or Japanese in five years.
If you maintain a steady pace, that’s 440 hours a year or just under eight and a half hours a week.
You do forty-five minutes each weekday. You could study regularly first thing in the morning before other duties kick in. If you did forty-five minutes or 3.75 hours in total, you then need to do 4.71 hours at the weekend.
If that’s too much, you could divvy things up like this:
You do the weekday work and just two hours at the weekend, giving you a total of 5.75 hours a week.
Over a year that more relaxed weekend regime leaves a shortfall of 440-(5.75 x 52) or 141 hours.
You make that up by attending intensive residential courses several times a year.
So learning is learning a new language a big commitment? Yes. Overwhelming? It doesn’t have to be.
Getting fluent in a language is a big commitment, to be sure.
Still, when we break down the figures, it doesn’t look so overwhelming.
Life would sometimes get in the way and, in practice, you’d probably be more flexible from week to week (sometimes more, sometimes less).
Yet this sort of time investment is something you could plan for. If it’s really a priority, you’ll have to rearrange your life to some extent.
You’ll know you need a language habit.
You’ll want to use the best methods.
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You’ll want to work as far as possible with materials you find interesting.
You’ll find teachers you get on well with and get to know.
You’ll have exchange partners and other ways of ensuring a wider accountability and community.
You can set clear milestones along the way and celebrate each stage of the journey.
You’re in for the long haul.
You know that when it comes to learning a language, as with so many other seemingly ambitious goals, people tend to overestimate what they can do in a year… but underestimate what they can do in five or ten.
Here’s the paradox: once you have realistic expectations about how long it takes to learn a language you’ll be less likely to get discouraged.
Set things up right and you’ll find that the further you get on your language learning journey, the more spending time with the language will become a normal and enriching part of the rhythm of your life.
And the time you’ve actually taken to get there is less and less likely to matter.
Hi Gareth.
I love this post. It is also extremely interesting for my research – I investigate how to teach languages more effectively. I would really appreciate a reference to an FSI document with the 5 categories and different numbers of hours (my quick search haven’t got me anywhere I am afraid).
I teach Russian, you see, and argue that its grammar requires different approach and different number of hours in the curriculum from, say, French. FSI reference will give my argument some weight.
Many thanks
It’s a good point, Natasha. The FSI scale is included on this page: https://www.state.gov/key-topics-foreign-service-institute/foreign-language-training/ and widely discussed around the net. It’s a starting point, I guess.
Ainu , Abkhaz, Tsez and Archi are also included in Category V. And chukchi
Category IV includes Ket as well.
Thanks, Slau. I wish they have more languages on the list…..
Hello Gareth,
First off, this was a wonderfully written and highly concise and informative article. Secondly, I have just started to learn Russian since my intentions are, as a chemistry student, to study abroad in Moscow for the school year of 2021-2022. I have started to take classes at my university here in Strasbourg, France, and I was just wondering if it’ll be possible by the summer of, let’s say, 2021 to attain a B2 level in Russian. What do you think? I can invest around 15 hours a week into studying and that is not including the four hours of in-class Russian lessons at my university. My professor says that it is possible with lots of hard work, dedication and perseverance, but I’d like an opinion from a third party. English is my native tongue and French is a close second. I know that, of course, that these languages have absolutely nothing in common with Russian (it being a slavic language), and that what farfetched similarities do exists simply stop at the fact that all three are Indo-European languages.
Thank you
Privet, Brandon! Glad you found the post useful. I think B2-ish Russian by autumn term 2021 is doable for somebody like you who’s in the groove with studying and has already got to a near native level with French (which means that you KNOW it’s possible to do it). My experience with Russian was that it was much slower than German but it’s always difficult to compare because of other variables. If you put in the 15 hour a week on top of your class, that means you’re really taking responsibility for your own learning. You could have a deliberate programme of working on pronunciation and vocab building (e.g. most frequent 2k words, preferably in phrases/context – e.g. Routledge Frequency dictionary) before you start speaking and listening much or, if you find that boring, start speaking early and/or get lots of early input (see my recent post on here about whether or not you should speak from “day 1”). Keep me posted and feel free to email.
These estimates always strike me as underestimates. It certainly took me more than 2000 hours to reach C1 level in French and in Russian. (I do have C1 level certificates in both, but sadly, I’m nowhere close to C2 level in either. Concerning Russian: I speak another Slavic language – Serbian – natively, which sped up the learning process quite significantly.) It’s hard to tell just how much time I’ve invested into those languages, but I can’t have spent less than 2000 hours on reading alone (2000 hours for each, that is). And that’s just reading.
What do you think? Did it only take you one-to-two thousand hours to reach C1 level in Russian? Or did it take longer?
I can’t really say how long it took me, Irena, as I’ve been learning for so many years. They could well be understimates, though, I agree. So difficult to record accurately at the higher levels in particular.
There is an extended list
Tibetan, Dzongkha and Many uralic languages are in Category IV with a star (More complex than other ones)
Category V includes Abkhaz, Archi, Tsez as well as Ainu.
Category IV also includes Irish. Ket (With a star). Chuvash. Thai (Starred). And Chukchi (With a star. As it is extremely complex)
Thanks for adding to the list, Usiaslau. Sorry it took me so long to get back to your comment!
Meh
Those time brackets are extremely unreliable to say the least. There’s just too many factors:
1. is this your first foreign language?;
2. have you mastered contextual understanding and other important learning methods?;
3. how disciplined are you and many others.
A yes or no answer to these and other questions can mean the difference between achieving C1 in Russian in 9 months (yes, it’s possible, i’ve done it) or 10 years (knew a few people back in the day that were studying Russian for 3 years and couldn’t do much else other than say “my name is…”).
Contrary to what 99% of Chinese expat students will tell you – doing a year in this or a coarse in that means absolutely nothing if you don’t put everything you’ve got into it.
Thanks for repeating the very caveats I made in the article 🙂 It would be fascinating to hear how you did it with the C1 Russian, Emil.
Yeah, sorry, I just skimmed through the article and focused on the groups and time brackets.
Can’t really say it’s that much of a fascinating story! In 2014 I decided that I would like to get my bachelors degree in Russia. There were only two major problems:
1. I didn’t know anybody from Russia
2. I knew just a couple of Russian words
This is why I did a pre-university language course in a language and culture school that’s run by the MSU (Moscow State University). It was a great way to both learn the language and ease myself into the society and culture.
I studied there for 9 months, five days a week, from morning till afternoon. The school was nice and all, but it really wasn’t enough to learn the language quickly enough. So I took the initiative and started learning additional material by myself. Sooo I started studying 7 days a week, aprox. 60-70 hrs. per week. Progress was still too slow, considering my end-goal, but after five or six months I reached a really important threshold – I stopped being annoying in conversations with locals (i’ll dive deeper into that in a bit). This allowed me to make some meaningful connections with the Russian students which were also living in my dorm. I started speaking to them daily which propelled my comprehension and ability to use Russian into a whole new dimension. In a couple of months I learned more than I did the six months prior to that. By the ninth month I had fully covered B2 and scored 95.6/100 on my B2 exam. I didn’t take a C1 exam at that time as it wasn’t included in the program and I didn’t need it for anything specific, but i’m fairly certain that I would have passed it, albeit with a lower score.
Now, in regards to being annoying. Obviously, I don’t consider myself to be an annoying person :D. What I mean is that you can be the coolest, most interesting person on the planet, but if you are speaking to a person in his native language and can’t express yourself properly, he’ll just get bored. We’ve all been there – someone is trying to tell you something, you are listening closely, it’s obviously something interesting, the complex thought slowly unravels aaaaaaaaaaaand the other person forgets this one simple word which derails his whole train of thought and the conversation is ruined by a three minute head-scratching contest. Usually the person finds the word after a short while, but if this happens several times during a single conversation it gets annoying and both sides just want to give up. After 3-4 attempts to lead a normal conversation your friendship devolves into a “hi-how are you-i’m good-bye” routine.
This is pretty much it. One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to learning a language, the effectiveness of each technique varies wildly from person to person, but here is the advice that I usually give:
1. never, ever learn two languages at once;
2. (unless learning languages is a hobby) never leave a language “unfinished”. Always strive to achieve C1, any lower than that means that you’ll forget in after one year of not practising. Think of it as something that you have to jam into your muscle memory (like playing the piano) before you can ease off on the learning and practicing;
3. dictionaries are poison, use contextual understanding instead;
4. dictionaries are poison, use contextual understanding instead;
5. dictionaries are poison, use contextual understanding instead. Gave this one 3 bullet points because it’s by far the most valuable advice I can give hahah. We all grow up having amazing contextual understanding, but this precious skill atrophies as we get older and in most people it disappears completely. If you meet an uncommon word when reading try to understand what the context is and what the word probably means. For example: “My hands are cold! I better put my ******* on”.
What is the article of clothing that you put on your hands when you are cold? Obviously, it’s gloves. If you actually use your brain, instead of mindlessly flipping through the dictionary, then you will both cover a lot more material a lot faster AND you have a much higher chance of remembering the word. Trust me, it’s a lot better to read 5 pages and be certain about the meaning of just 90% of the words, than to read one page and check the meaning of all the unknown words. Dictionaries are only useful and B2-C1 when you will meet very specific words, whose precise meaning is very important. In this case the dictionary won’t significantly hamper your progress, since those words will be few and far between;
6. speak! As I’ve already mentioned, participating in meaningful conversations for a couple of hours can be more fruitful than studying at your desk from dusk till dawn;
7. watch the national news. Odds are you won’t find anyone that speaks more accurately than a news anchor on a big TV channel;
8. persistence, discipline, daily practise. Less, but more often always trumps 12 hours every Sunday
I could probably come up with a few more, but I think i’ve listed all of the more important ones.
P.S. I left my email and checked the “notify me” box, but I didn’t get an e-mail when you replied. You might want to look into that!
Cheers
Привет Эмил! Many thanks for this value-packed comment. Great advice and inspiration. This would make a brilliant guest post in its own right :))
There are some really good things in this comment.
A question: what exactly is there to master with contextual learning? (you wrote “have you mastered…. contextual learning”) Or do you just mean, “are you doing it?”
Just out of curiosity… Did you delete my comment, or did it get eaten by the server?
Anyway, I just wanted to say that all these estimates strike me as underestimates. I always took longer to reach these levels. Well, sort of. I think these estimates actually count “contact hours” (i.e. time spent in class). Homework/self-study is extra. If you put it that way, then these estimates might even be overestimates (if you spend several hours on HW/self-study for each hour of class).
But less than 1000 hours (total, not just contact) to C1? I’m sure some linguistically gifted souls can do it. 🙂 I never could, though yes, I have reached that level or higher in a language or three. 😉 It just took more than 1000 hours, that’s all.
Hi Irena, not me! It must have been a tech problem! Thanks for reposting, in any case, and you make a very good point. I try to be as conservative as possible as to time estimates but there is always room to be more so (as me pretty dire attempts to speak Basque several years in will testify!) 🙂
So, I guess I was right: these estimates really do count contact hours. Take a look at this article:
http://sealang.net/archives/sla/gurt_1999_07.pdf
It’s called “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching,” and it was written by two people who work for FSI. The whole article is well-worth reading, but for now, take a look at Table 2 (on page 8). It gives an estimate of *class* hours to reach the goal. (The goal seems to be roughly C1, though this isn’t entirely clear.) Elsewhere, they say: “Learning as quickly as possible to speak and understand a language automatically and effectively in a variety of situations and for a range of purposes requires intensive exposure to and interaction with that language. At FSI, we have found that it requires at least four class hours a day—usually more—for five days a week, plus three or more additional hours a day of independent study.” So… FSI students spend roughly double the amount of time stated in those estimates on language learning (if you count class+HW combined) before they’re ready to take their posts.
However, note the description below Table 2. It says (in part): “All estimates in this figure assume that the student is a native speaker of English with no prior knowledge of the language to be learned. It is also assumed that the student has very good or better aptitude for classroom learning of foreign languages. Less skilled language learners typically take longer.” I’m not sure how exactly they estimate aptitude. In any case, though, if you’re trying to reach a level deemed sufficient by FSI (C1-ish?), you need to take their estimates, then multiply that approximately by 2 (because you’re spending roughly an hour on HW for each hour of class), and then in addition, if you lack “very good or better aptitude for classroom learning of foreign languages,” and/or you lack optimal conditions (at FSI, they work in tiny groups with highly experienced teachers), and/or you sometimes privilege enjoyment over efficiency in language learning (unreasonable if you’re in a major hurry to learn, but perfectly sensible if you’re a hobbyist), then it’ll take longer. So, doubling the estimate once more (in total: FSI estimate x 4) makes sense. This is also somewhat in line with my own language learning experience.
BTW, Emil’s comment above was very, very interesting. But note what he said: 9 months times 60-70 hours per week to get to C1 level in Russian. That’s approximately 2500 hours total, which is well above FSI’s 1100 hour estimate for Russian, but still very good given the above considerations. So, kudos to him! 🙂
Thanks for this very useful comment, Irena! I’ll check out the article you cite.
Thank you Irena for your observations. I am a 68 year old non-retiree trying to learn French. I have put in approximately 150+ hours and am still in the A1 level. Am I stupid, I don’t think so. Am I a loser, perhaps. Am I making full use of my study time, no. What I am is someone who takes longer to learn a new language. Yes, FSI estimate x4 makes complete sense to me.
I am trying to figure out how long it will take me to get from mid B2 in French to C1? I test online high B1 – B2, and tend to get the grammatical questions mostly correct, but miss the oral. In other words, my ear is terrible! In my defense, I minored in the language 30+ years ago, and rarely get to use it. :0 Any thoughts?
It’s usually said you need a couple of hundred hours to move from B2 to C1. As you’ll appreciate, there are a lot of variables, though, such as intensity of study, effectiveness and experience and how much wider (non study) input and speaking/writing practice you’re getting. You could book the exam for three to six months from now (bit hard with the COVID-19 crisis, perhaps) and then work back from there. Don’t forget to train up the techniques of the exams themselves and get a lot of practice in past papers. You can read how I did it for C1 German (Goethe) and C1 Russian (TRKI 3rd cert) here on the site. I am planning to do C1 French but other projects keep getting in the way. The textbook I have is Alter Ego 5 C1/C2, which is great and also the Réussir the DALF C1/C2 exam training book. Good luck, Kimberly, and let me know how it goes!
Gareth, I believe that those couple hundred (meaning 200?) hours are supposed to be “contact hours” (with a teacher). HW is on top of that. If you managed to get from B2 to C1 in 200 hours total (not just contact), that would be incredibly fast. Maybe if you’re highly talented. But consider just the fact that, going from B2 to C1, you’re supposed to *double* your vocabulary size. B2 is 4000-5000 words, while C1 is 8000-1000. So, going from B2 to C1 requires learning approximately 4000 new words. To do that in 200 hours, you’d need to learn 20 new words per hour (on average), or one word every 3 minutes. And that’s just vocabulary. At B2, you’re supposed to be able to understand the main points of a newspaper article. At C1, you’re supposed to be able to read full length books without too much trouble. So, to get from B2 to C1, you’d need to read the equivalent of at least half a dozen (likely more) full length books written for native speakers. That alone could easily take you 200 hours or more (you’d be reading in a language you’re not yet fluent in, after all; it’s supposed to be hard at first, and then gradually easier and easier). And then there’s listening. And fluency (in speaking and writing). Accuracy requirements go up quite a bit as well. I just don’t see how you could reasonably expect to do all that in 200 hours.
Kimberly, I’d suggest setting aside 500-1000 hours for your French in order to get from B2 to C1. Make sure you get plenty of exposure to native-level content (both written and spoken), and also make sure you practice both speaking and writing (at C1, you should be able to write essays on a variety of complex topics). If you want to take an exam, I’d give it at least a year, preferably two (unless you can afford to study full time for the next few months, in which case, you might indeed make it in 3-6 months).
Thanks, Irena, this is really helpful. It’s rare that I’m the one being the “learn fast” optimist! I should have pointed out more clearly that input and output practise is on top of the 200 hundred hours. I think Kimberly is someway into her B2 journey with some of the skills, so that’s a good head start. Merci!
Hello Gareth, great analysis, realistic without being discouraging. Having read quickly through some of the comments, I’d say I’ll second Irena’s as well as Emil’s.
However, I do have an issue with the reference all language attainment scales (be it CEFR or ILS) make to a ‘native proficiency level’. To my experience there is no such thing in real life. Which schooling result (always the unforeseeable case-by-case sum of teaching abilities + learning aptitudes) could legitimately be a universal benchmark for ‘native’?
Thanks for reading and for your comment, Helmar. I agree that “native proficiency level” is a difficult concept. I prefer “near native”. That means, to me, approaching the level of a typical adult who’s gone through the education system.
Is it possible to reach B1 or B2 levels without an instructor and just relying on free online resources? I was thinking of such things as free movies, radio programmes, numerous online freebies, including newspapers and magazines.
You can get a long way on your own, Krishnan but you obviously need speaking partners to learn to speak (you can do free exchanges). You can find explanations yourself of vocab and grammar. Everybody needs a certain amount of corrective feedback, though, so if you’re doing free exchanges you’ll have to ask your partner to point out the most important errors you’re making as you go (not everything, just the things that are the most serious at each stage of your journey. Whether or not you pay for tuition, it’s a great idea to get lots and lots of input as you suggest. You can’t get fluent without it.
Hi Gareth,
I am someone with native speaking proficiency level in Hindi and Malayalam (Indian languages), intermediate proficiency in Tamil (another Indian language with similarity to Malayalam) and a C1 proficiency in English. If I wished to learn Spanish from scratch, how long would it take me? I am a working professional and can devote an hour every day for focused studying.
This is a very interesting article and also realistic.
There are also teachers and schools out there that I am not going to name that promise students that they will speak a language in record time and have no testimonials to show for it and some that do are most probably fake.
Learning a language takes time, practice and use as many resources available because one may always have something the other doesn’t.
A teacher cannot shove vocabulary and grammar rules on a complete beginner student and expect them to speak the language the next minute it doesn’t work like that.
What is possible to do is if a student has existing knowledge buried in the brain is to get them to pluck the confidence to speak, that is possible yes.
This is probably why a lot of students on italki hop from teacher to teacher all the time and same with physical schools.
Also another thing worth mentioning is that different teachers have different styles and different expertise some are very good at working with beginners, others are better with intermediate/advanced and literature, others are better at getting the student to speak comfortably and others are good at teaching pronounciation and accent reduction so I don’t think you will stay with the same teacher for the entire journey.
Thanks for reading, Ana, and for this very helpful comment!
So many elements go into learning a language.
* Attitude: “I’m really bad at languages.” Hmm, how did you learn your native language so well? Have you forgotten how hard you worked on it in school? How much one-on-one tutoring you got as a baby?
* Ability: Some people are naturally gifted with languages. Others have to struggle for every word, maybe even in their native tongue.
* Perseverence: Some people who are gifted with language don’t have perseverence. But the struggler might. Guess who achieves more in the end?
* Teachers: Some teachers make you eager to soak up every bit of knowledge they have. Others scare you into hiding. FInd someone whose personality and teaching style works for you.
MY TIPS FOR LEARNING LANGUAGES:
If you are the country, immerse yourself locally. Don’t hang around with other ex-pats all the time. Try to live with locals.
Hang around little kids. Their language is simple, pristine and non-abstract. In this way, you replicate your own mother tongue acquisition.
If you have difficulty with certain tenses, or usage, find contexts that would use them. Like, to learn command forms, hang around dog owners. “Sit! Stay!” Want to learn action words? Watch or paritcipate in sports: “For next play, let’s run around left side!”
If you have access to a cultural center or are in the target culture, find local activities like arts & crafts, folk dance, music. That way you’ll meet locals, learn culture and interactive norms, and “how-to” nuggets of language.
Try daily challenges:
Get a bus pass and get lost.
Get hungry. Find food.
Need a bathroom. Follow directions.
Read a map.
If you’re NOT in the country:
Start with a community-ed level class to whet your whistle. You’ll get a taste of the language and its basic structure. Outside of class, watch movies or kids TV in that language. This way, you can see the language being used in interactive context. Canned courses are okay for general taste, but being in a group is best—motivation, commitment, interaction. Watching news is good for pronunciation and more abstract expression.
After this, you can try a college-level class that requires more hours, homework, and deeper commitment.
FSI-type classes or academic intensives may be great for developing high-level ability, but they exact a huge price: mentally, time, money. They are not for the faint-of-heart! Most people cannot handle the mental pressure of studying a foreign language for 8+ hours a day.
Even in or out of the country, an hour class per day is quite ideal, plus an hour per day of homework. But basic familiarity doesn’t take that intense work. If the language is similar to your own, you can pick up much in daily life.
IN GENERAL:
Open up your mind to something new. Absorb new patterns.
Be willing to make mistakes!
Repetition, repetition, repetition!
Don’t think you can APP your way out of things. Learn your lessons inside your brain, not in your app.
Practice your lesson right before bed, and right when you wake up.
Find ways to replicate your childhood acquisition—nursery rhymes, lullabys, folk and pop songs, folk tales.
Music is often overlooked as learning tool. Especially folk music, which embodies the rhythm, pacing, and accenting, stories and ideals of the language and culture.
True fluency has arrived when you can think of ten ways to say the same thing!
You master a language by ACCRUING knowledge over time, letting it sink in deep.
Thanks for sharing your advice, B.
Gareth,
This is a nice article, well-written. However, it reinforces a flaw which Is all over the Internet, the # of hours in the FSI’s chart.
You referred to the numbers as being the number of study.
Those numbers are the number of CLASS hours which FSI students typically need to reach B2 to C1 proficiency in listening, reading, writing, and conversing exams.
They meet 25-30 hours a week. In addition they study 5-10 hours a day 6-7:days a week. They are paid while they’re there.
I have known a half a dozen members of our foreign service, career diplomats.
How they do will greatly affect their careers. In addition to their language exams they have to pass the Foreign Service Exam un order to have a prayer of being offered a job.
As of 30-40 years ago most were fluent in at least one other language before they applied. They most likely will go through the scool four or five times.
My beef with most websites’ discussions is that they cause language learners to lose confidence or hope because they are trying to meet an artificially high standard for the amount of time they’ve been working on the language.
Just found your site and am looking forward to reading a lot more.
Thanks for this helpful comment, Red drum. I will tweak the post to make the difference between class hours and private study. I was aware that the FSI totals are only class hours but this certainly doesn’t come through clearly enough in the post.