People say this type of stuff on the forum all the time, but it just doesn't translate to my real life. I've lived in Japan for about four years, so I've met a ton of Japanese learners, and everybody's level seems pretty much the same according to the number of years they've studied.
There are a few things which I see that cause variations:
●People who have especially outgoing personalities get better at spoken conversation much quicker once they are living in the country.
●Some people never study at all (despite saying that they want to), and they never learn more than about 300 words even if they live in Japan for years.
●People who get married to Japanese people who don't speak English improve quickly, especially if they have kids together.
●People who study abroad in high school and take classes entirely in Japanese get pretty good within a year, even when they start from scratch.
So as much as I hear people say that you can do such-and-such in just 2-3 years, I've never met anyone who actually did that among the more than 100 Japanese learners I've met (even though I've met people that used RTK and SRS). My experience is that most people start to get really fluent in Japanese at about 7 years of study.
I know that people in this forum aren't lying. I'm just saying that this forum seems to be biased in favor of fast learning when compared to the general Japanese learning population.
I'm talking, of course, only about learners whose native language was English.
There are a few things which I see that cause variations:
●People who have especially outgoing personalities get better at spoken conversation much quicker once they are living in the country.
●Some people never study at all (despite saying that they want to), and they never learn more than about 300 words even if they live in Japan for years.
●People who get married to Japanese people who don't speak English improve quickly, especially if they have kids together.
●People who study abroad in high school and take classes entirely in Japanese get pretty good within a year, even when they start from scratch.
So as much as I hear people say that you can do such-and-such in just 2-3 years, I've never met anyone who actually did that among the more than 100 Japanese learners I've met (even though I've met people that used RTK and SRS). My experience is that most people start to get really fluent in Japanese at about 7 years of study.
I know that people in this forum aren't lying. I'm just saying that this forum seems to be biased in favor of fast learning when compared to the general Japanese learning population.
I'm talking, of course, only about learners whose native language was English.
Edited: 2012-01-16, 9:30 am