I think language learning work’s the best when you actually use the languages you are learning, and that depends alot on where you live… I also live germany, and there are alot of foreigners here, but i spend probably half an hour a day looking over a few things, and I have found it much more productive making friends with native speakers of the language, so you can learn how to appy the things that you learn.For example, I asked my russian neighbours if I could help out around the house or help in the garden, and in return they speak russian with me all the time, and I also find it rather surprising that when you ask about something like that, the people are usally very ready and excited to help you…
Of course if you live in a place where you have a chance to use the language you are lucky. I am not in that situation, and I do not have a lot of time to spend on language learning, so I mostly just listen, but certainly not while sleeping!
I tend to do various thing in Japanese for long several hours. Such as reading a book or manga (out loud) in Japanese, then watching online shows, blogging in Japanese, and chatting in Japanese-language forums as well as switching the language of social networking sites to the language that I am learning.
I spend about 2 to 3 hours a day on languages. This is not sitting with a book. I listen while I am driving and I listen when I am doing the laundry, cleaning up etc. I keep a phrasebook handy if I think I’m going to be caught in line somewhere. On Sunday I will study up to about four hours. This works if people in my family are taking naps…I also count the time here and time I spend talking to people in other languages.
I rarely listen with headphones as I need good hearing for work.
About older people and learning: I am not a senior citizen, but I have worked with people in this group (let’s say over age 70) and I’ve noticed that some of them are much sharper than younger people (myself included). I expect this is because they’ve always been smart.
People can learn languages at all ages-especially people who have been learning languages for years. What I don’t know (and I’d like to know) is whether or not someone can fully learn a second language or at least acheive good conversational fluency in advanced age if s/he has never studied a second language.
I keep running into people who want to learn languages. One of them is a dear lady in her sixties who has a good case of language guilt. She has neighbors who speak Spanish. She bought a book in Spanish for kids and hopes that this will help her. I doubt it, but I don’t want to discourage language learning.
I’m young and after school if I’m not going somewhere with my friends then I’m just sitting at home in front of the computer for hours (I need a job lol). So I spend a good chunk of this dead time here on Lingq or doing other language things, though I can’t really say exactly how long because it varies and I often go between that and other random activities. Oh youth.