![]() ![]() ![]() Is ten hours a day reasonable to learn a language? It could be. If you were to study a language 10 hours a day… But let’s look at what a 10 hour day of language study might look like. Furthermore, if we don’t have 10 hours a day, we are better to focus on activities that we like doing and that are easy to organize, like listening and reading, using a system like LingQ, for example. Most of us don’t have 10 hours a day to spend, so it will take longer. If you only put in five hours a day, it will take twice as long. Accounting for days off, this equates to two months or three months time. If we are able to put in 10 hours a day to learn a language, then basic fluency in the easy languages should take 48 days, and for difficult languages 72 days. įSI research indicates that it takes 480 hours to reach basic fluency in group 1 languages, and 720 hours for group 2-4 languages. On this scale, I would call limited working proficiency above basic conversational fluency. The person has speaking proficiency equivalent to that of an educated native speaker. This is nice if you can achieve it but takes a long time. The person uses the language fluently and accurately on all levels normally pertinent to professional needs. This probably corresponds to B2 on the European Framework of Reference. This is the first level that is useful in real situations. The person can speak the language with sufficient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations on practical, social, and professional topics. This is a limited ability to converse and really only a step towards real fluency. The person is able to satisfy routine social demands and limited work requirements. I have to admit that I have never found this minimum level really works that well beyond saying hello and asking for the bathroom. The person is able to satisfy routine travel needs and minimum courtesy requirements. The FSI, US Foreign Service Institute, divides languages into groups of difficulty for speakers of English:įrench, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swahiliīulgarian, Burmese, Greek, Hindi, Persian, UrduĪmharic, Cambodian, Czech, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Lao, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese How Long to Learn a Language According to the FSI One organization with lots of learners has made an estimate of the time required to learn different languages. In other words, does the learner like the language, feel confident that he or she can learn it, believe in the method being used etc.? These can include the methods used, but also the attitude of the learner as explained above. Some of the implications for teacher education are discussed.It is not easy to answer this question since there are so many factors that can influence the amount of time required to learn a language. The widest gaps were in productive domains in general and in oral grammar in particular. Teachers in each of the three countries perceived substantial gaps between their English proficiency and the minimum level needed to teach. The teachers evaluated their proficiencies in productive skills (speaking and writing) as weaker than those in receptive skills (listening and reading). Elementary school teachers from Korea, Taiwan, and Japan were asked to self-evaluate their English proficiencies as well as to specify the minimum level of proficiency that they felt was needed to teach English at the elementary school level. ![]() The present study focuses on teachers' English proficiency, which has been recognized as an important qualification for successful English teaching. However, the majority of elementary school teachers in such countries might not be adequately prepared to teach English improving their English proficiency and teaching skills has thus become a matter of concern. Responding to the growing need to foster communicative abilities in English, many Asian countries where English is taught as a foreign language have recently introduced English at the elementary school level.
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