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+--- Thread: How long does it take to learn a language. (/thread-11585.html)
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How long does it take to learn a language. - RawToast - 2014-02-17
Stansfield123 Wrote:Three months has a lot of hours in it. One can spend about 600 hours studying (6 hours/day, not unheard of) and several hundred more reading and listening.You also have plenty of scenarios like languages you may have dabbled in at school/college, but didn't progress far in. I am sure if you did a few years (badly) in French, German, Spanish, etc which you have mostly forgotten (like many British people, but I am sure it is like this elsewhere) you could relearn it very fast.
I think that would take an English speaker quite far in French, or a Spanish speaker in Portuguese or Italian, etc.
How long does it take to learn a language. - Tzadeck - 2014-02-17
tashippy Wrote:Thanks for taking the bait, ya'll.Everyone realized it was a jig from the beginning, and the hook was in plain sight. Nobody mistook your post for anything other than what it was.
How long does it take to learn a language. - dtcamero - 2014-02-17
bflatnine Wrote:It also doesn't account for the fact that...it also doesn't account for the difference between passive immersion and active study. that equation assumes you can just sit in a classroom and work diligently for however many thousands of hours and come out with the ability to understand spoken japanese.
active study is great and necessary but only part of the process. and I don't know how you can plug passive immersion into that tidy little equation there. makes me really curious to see those FSI people sit down in front of an episode of Dragon Zakura and see what they make of it.
and then there's just real japanese that you only experience in japan... you can read every textbook in the world to prepare yourself, but when you try to order coffee at starbucks the first thing they'll say is お召し上がりですか？お持ち帰りですか？good luck processing that one.
How long does it take to learn a language. - bflatnine - 2014-02-17
dtcamero Wrote:makes me really curious to see those FSI people sit down in front of an episode of Dragon Zakura and see what they make of it.I don't see why you're doubting FSI's results because some guy on this forum came up with a flawed equation. The one has nothing to do with the other, and in fact, FSI's programs include an extended stay in-country (44 weeks in Yokohama for Japanese students). Would you expect anything different from the school that's training the US's diplomats? And of course, most graduates are assigned to live in-country or working with the language in some capacity in Washington after their training is over, and are expected to (and rewarded for) maintaining or increasing their ability in the language.
I have no idea what Dragon Zakura is, but as long as the language used in it doesn't deviate too far from language relevant to their professional needs (which is what ILR measures and what FSI teaches to), anyone at ILR3 (or perhaps 2+) would do just fine. We're talking about one of the best language schools in the world here.
Actually, I once met a recent graduate of FSI's Chinese program here in Taipei. He was a foreign service officer doing the "Beyond 3" course at the American Institute in Taiwan, and his Chinese was very impressive. Very much skewed toward the sort of situations he finds himself in at work, which is to say he can't shoot the shit like a native speaker because he tends to speak fairly formally, but very good.
How long does it take to learn a language. - dtcamero - 2014-02-17
Well that all seems reasonable, and if you spend a year in japan after a few years' study you'll get a good ear for the language for sure. But unless I am mistaken that estimate given above of 88 weeks, or 2200 class hours
(http://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers)
was the FSI estimate for how long it takes to learn a language.
Now maybe they are not deriving those numbers from their own experience, but if so then what business do they have coming up with the number? they should put another asterisk next to the number saying (assume that half of estimate's time is spent living in the target country), which then kind of renders the number irrelevant.
and dragon zakura is a tv show that uses various types of everyday spoken japanese.
How long does it take to learn a language. - tashippy - 2014-02-17
Tzadeck Wrote:Except for Sholum.tashippy Wrote:Thanks for taking the bait, ya'll.Everyone realized it was a jig from the beginning, and the hook was in plain sight. Nobody mistook your post for anything other than what it was.
edit: and yes the hook was in plain sight. I'm just glad a real discussion happened rather than a dud.
How long does it take to learn a language. - tashippy - 2014-02-17
Stansfield123 Wrote:Three months has a lot of hours in it. One can spend about 600 hours studying (6 hours/day, not unheard of) and several hundred more reading and listening.I have read here and elsewhere that people kinda max out their mental facilities for study after four hours of study, but if you do that and then relax with some native media (i.e. lots watch of movies) it might be doable. And it's also useful to stick up your nose at people who say 'people can't do this or that' and just do it anyway.
I feel like I would take on a new language with more efficiency after doing so many inefficient things in Japanese study (but also helpful things). I've been thinking about taking up Vietnamese, and I was thinking of trying to approach it by memorizing whole phrases and then kinda figuring out the grammar from there, rather than learning too many vocab at once and then translating vocab words from English into sentences that aren't really natural-sounding.
edit: and I don't think the numbers are irrelevant in the sense that they give a general idea relative to other languages, but yeah it's impossible to get accurate numbers.
How long does it take to learn a language. - bflatnine - 2014-02-17
Quote:But unless I am mistaken that estimate given above of 88 weeks, or 2200 class hours (http://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers) was the FSI estimate for how long it takes to learn a language.The information is all there. You have x hours of classroom instruction. You're expected to spend y hours per day studying on your own. You'll be spending z weeks of the program in the target country. It's all there. It isn't FSI's fault if you don't read the information they've put out closely enough or if you assume they're talking about one thing when they're talking about another.
they should put another asterisk next to the number saying (assume that half of estimate's time is spent living in the target country), which then kind of renders the number irrelevant.
edit: And they didn't publish their information in a Wikibook, that's for sure. Go to the source before you start criticizing them.
How long does it take to learn a language. - vileru - 2014-02-17
bflatnine Wrote:It also doesn't account for the fact that self-study at home and classroom instruction are not equivalent, and that the FSI is likely one of the most efficient language schools out there, so classroom instruction elsewhere will not be of the same effectiveness as it will there.Nonetheless, I do think the numbers and my formulas based on those numbers give a useful rough estimate for how many hours need to be spent daily, weekly, and in total to reach advanced proficiency in Japanese.
That said, I don't think I had anywhere near that number of classroom hours. I think after it was all said and done, I spent about 900 hours in the classroom and maybe 100 with a tutor before I reached level 3 (about the same time I started working as a translator). I worked pretty hard on the side though.
Our own forum members confirm the accuracy of the numbers. The ones who studied relentlessly (4+ hours daily) were able to pass JLPT N1 with a decent score (130+) in about 2.5-3 years (e.g. zorlee, DrDunlap, and mezbup). Several others, myself included, who studied hard (2-3hrs daily) were able to pass N1 with similar scores in 4-5 years. Of course, this is assuming that a N1 score of 130+ corresponds to FSI level 3 proficiency.
Anyway, for those interested in what language learning at FSI is like, I recommend this article.
How long does it take to learn a language. - dtcamero - 2014-02-17
bflatnine Wrote:wow you must be in love with an FSI prof or have a hard-on for their program. way to make it personal...Quote:But unless I am mistaken that estimate given above of 88 weeks, or 2200 class hours (http://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers) was the FSI estimate for how long it takes to learn a language.The information is all there. You have x hours of classroom instruction. You're expected to spend y hours per day studying on your own. You'll be spending z weeks of the program in the target country. It's all there. It isn't FSI's fault if you don't read the information they've put out closely enough or if you assume they're talking about one thing when they're talking about another.
they should put another asterisk next to the number saying (assume that half of estimate's time is spent living in the target country), which then kind of renders the number irrelevant.
edit: And they didn't publish their information in a Wikibook, that's for sure. Go to the source before you start criticizing them.
and as for going to the source... I double checked all the links searching for this information that is "all there", which I rudely ignored. No one posted anything about, or any links to the use of passive immersion. Nor did anyone post any links to your 44 weeks in the target language's country. I read the last article which said that a guy studying German spent one week in Germany as prep.
If you have other information on their program's way of dealing with these two rather essential aspects of language learning, I would like to see it. Otherwise, no frankly I would have serious doubts as to any classroom-based language program's efficacy relative to self-study.
How long does it take to learn a language. - bflatnine - 2014-02-17
I'm not going to do your Googling for you, but here's a start. I never said the information was linked to in this thread, just that it's out there. It's also pretty easy to find.
I don't really get the first part of your post. I pointed out facts and never made it personal. For some reason, you took it personally and have resorted to being crude.
I have no doubt that self-study can be more efficient than classroom instruction. But that hinges on the student actually having a clue about how to go about learning a language on their own, and in my experience there are very, very few who do.
How long does it take to learn a language. - sholum - 2014-02-18
bflatnine Wrote:I have no doubt that self-study can be more efficient than classroom instruction. But that hinges on the student actually having a clue about how to go about learning a language on their own, and in my experience there are very, very few who do.That's part of the learning process, though. I'll claim that almost anyone with a chance for success at learning a language to any significant level has to figure out how to learn on their own (or just in general). I'd say this is true whether it's self-study or the best language school in the world. The only successful ones are the ones that continue to learn outside of class; to study outside of class requires at least some idea of how exactly to go about it, so whether you're studying on your own or learning from a program, you need to be able to learn things yourself.
I'm not saying one way is definitely better than the other, especially since some people just aren't cut out for self-study, but I do think that what I said above is true.
Of course, since they throw you into the country for 44 weeks, I assume that they realize this and are trying to force participants to figure things out themselves.