There’s a lot of estimates regarding how long it takes to learn a language. Ultimately, the answer depends on you and your personal goals. #languages
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I decided to skim through this, knowing that it would repeat the usual stuff about the FSI etc. As I read through it, the following phrase stopped me dead in my tracks:
“For languages that are more similar to English, I have no doubt that someone who is observant, has a positive attitude, and engages with the language for an hour or so every day should expect to reach basic conversational fluency in 2-3 months.”
After reading that, I might as well give up studying German. What’s the point?
I have been studying German for two and a half years, initially for 30 minutes a day, then after 18 months, for one hour a day. I still have not reached a basic conversational fluency, nowhere near. After 18 months, following methods promoted by Kaufmann, I was struggling to recall basic phrases. Using the Comprehensible Input approach, words and grammar just weren’t sticking. After changing to so-called traditional methods - those promoted by Alex Rawlings and others - including doing simple exercises i.e. output and studying grammar, I started to make progress.
Either Kaufmann has incredible language learning skills, or I am very dim. Given that I have a degree and PhD from two world class universities, I’m probably not dim, but my memory must be exceptionally poor.
An alternative rather cynical view would suggest that he is making ridiculous claims in order to encourage people to purchase a LingQ subscription. Or perhaps he is out of touch with how long it takes an inexperienced learner to learn a new L2.
Does anyone else think Kaufmann’s statement quoted above is realistic?
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I guess it depends on what is meant by “basic conversational fluency”.
If the extent of the conversation is. Hi, my name is … What’s your name? How are you? I’m fine. Thanks. It’s nice weather today. Yes it is, but yesterday was bad.
It could go much deeper than above in 2-3 months, but it’s likely not going to be unless you are focusing on those sentences that you will be using in a basic conversation. And practicing them. In such a short timespan to have basic conversations I think you would need to focus on that and not be reading anything “fun”.
You also have the problem of having the other speaker deviate from what you expect them to say. And you won’t understand them when they do.
The other thing…one hour a day is just 60-90 hours. We talk about needing hundreds of hours of listening alone to be required. Again, this depends on what is meant by “basic conversational fluency”. If you practice, you might be able to say even a lot more than you would understand the other person saying back to you.
I’m not sure what language is super close to English that would only require 2-3 months. Many talk of the Dutch, Swedish, etc being close. They aren’t that close in my limited experience. Spanish, to me, probably seems the closest. There are hundreds, if not thousands of words, that with a few pattern changes are words you already know. Still, in 2-3 months of just an hour a day I don’t think you’d get very far.
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Interestingly, I looked in the comments and some are from 2016/2017 and mentions 10 hrs a day. Not sure if there’s something funny going on, but if that’s the case, the blog post seems recycled and maybe ten hours a day was changed to one??? 10 hours a day at least makes a little more sense. In any event, it went on to say that a difficult language to basic conversational fluency would take 6-9 months at an hour a day.
This is the proposed definition of basic conversational fluency in the article:
Personally, I consider basic conversational fluency to be a good milestone. At this level, the learner can handle routine tasks, work requirements, and converse with relative ease despite limitations in grammar and vocabulary. Others, of course, aim for a near-native or bilingual proficiency, in which they can use the language at a high level, nearly indistinguishable from an educated native speaker. This is quite difficult to achieve.
“Work requirements and converse with ease” I think I would quibble with in the timeframe mentioned. Routine daily tasks, sure.
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Here’s from the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine in 2013 with the blog publication date being 2010.
FSI research indicates that it takes 480 hours to reach basic fluency in group 1 languages, and 720 hours for group 2-4 languages.
If we are able to put in 10 hours a day, then basic fluency in the easy languages should take 48 days, and for difficult languages 72 days. Accounting for days off, this equates to two months or three months time. If you only put in 5 hours a day, it will take twice as long.
To some extent the language needs time to gestate and often things we study today do not click in for months. On the other hand intensity has its own benefits. I have no doubt that someone following this intense program, or something similar, would achieve basic conversational fluency in 2 months for easy languages, and 3 months for difficult languages.
If you look through through the Way Back Machine, the article has changed multiple times over the years. My guess is that it’s just a good source of web traffic.
I imagine the LingQ marketing person is mainly the one who updates it, so it’s not necessarily Steve’s exact opinion, but I suspect Steve’s opinion has changed over time too.
For instance, in the most recent article it’s actually acknowledged that the FSI averages are only classroom hours and don’t include out-of-class hours. This is a good change of opinion. (From my research, I think the good rule of thumb is to double the FSI estimates to get the true amount of time.) Also, maybe the FSI had different estimates back in the day?
The change in the article from 10 hours per day to 1 hour per day is mad though. It requires some serious changing of the definition of “basic conversational fluency.”
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I really don’t see how one could get that impression 
It could be, though, that the change from 10 hours a day to 1 is just a typo. However, recycling old articles isn’t a good habit to begin with, imho, especially if there isn’t anything new to state.
Also, what is “…observant, has a positive attitude, and enganges with the language…” supposed to mean, anyways? For me this sounds like catchphrases. What would be the opposite? Would not reaching “…basic conversational fluency in 2-3 months…” mean that I am ignorant, having a negative attitude and beeing unengaged?
This is already an odd statement, as it implies that there is no relationship between intensity and effectiveness, so that the amount of what you learn within an hour spent is independent from the amount of hours you spend per day, week, etc. This contradicts the often repeated statement that it is important to learn on a regular basis, preferably every day (imho nothing more then a justification for that streak functionality which btw. can also be found in some social media apps and is part of current studies in regards to their potential of creating addictive behaviour).
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I experienced this, too. The point for me is that the shared vocabulary is mainly in technical or academical fields. So after learning Spanish for 3-6 months with maybe 30-60 minutes a day (mainly using Duolingo back than), I was able to read newspaper articles, especially if they were dealing with science, or read a manual of a coffee maker or sort of. But I am unable to understand a book or anything related to everyday tasks, as (1) the amount of vocabulary shared there is way lower and (2) everyday speech often uses idiomatic expressions that are usually avoided in newspaper articles and such.
So the effect of a language beeing rather close might not be as high in every aspect. And, of course, it depends on what you are learning a language for. I would assume that a huge part of the people in the world who learn English do so mainly for academic reasons. So conversational fluency might not even be on their goal list. I for one never really needed it.
On the other side, someone might learn a language because he likes to go on vacation in a country where the language is spoken and wants to be able to chat with the locals. Beeing able to read books in the language, or having a vocabulary or grammatical skills at nearly the level as in his native language might not be a goal in this case.
Depending on that the easening coming from the choice of a related language and the overall time and effort it takes - and the kind of effort! - might differ.
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Catchphrases? I’ll go with that as a summary.
I assume that observant equates to noticing, which is crucial. In my experience noticing is strongly coupled to the study methodology adopted by the student. The issue with input alone is that noticing can be low. The student really needs to be helped to notice, which is where exercises such as output and playing around with the language come in. When you are forced to piece it together, you realise that you haven’t really understood it. I agree that just saying that one should be observant isn’t very helpful.
Having a positive attitude probably means believing that you will succeed. It sounds trite, but attitude is key.
Engaging with the language means listening to it, and reading it, rather than avoiding any form of contact with it. Sounds like good advice to me. Or do you disagree? I agree it is not a very helpful advice.
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To state the obvious, these articles and videos are advertising for LingQ, and it can’t be easy trying to think of something fresh to say. Plus he always has to bring it back to the intended purpose, namely encouraging new users to start, or move over to, learning an L2 with LingQ. And the YouTube algorithm requires regular new content. It favours quantity over quality, and it favours click bait titles.
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Well, the advice is what you and I interpret into those lines based on our own experience. However, experienced users probably don’t need articles such as those to improve their learning efficiency, but a bit more in depth.
For new users, as in people never having learned a second language outside of school, those phrases may sound good, but they don’t really give any detailed explanation or starting point for how to approach language learning (besides the, already mentioned, advertised usage of LingQ).
So my criticism in the part of mine you quoted isn’t so much that the article is wrong, it is just very vague. Most of those posts line up pretty well with Krashen, as their are one third stating the obvious, one third making generalized claims and one third blurrish phrases that are completely up to interpretation (i+1 anyone).
That’s what Steve claims in the article. FWIW, it’s not what he says in the YouTube.
In fact, he starts off by asking, What’s the hurry? Then advising students, You’ll learn as quickly as you learn.
The closest he gets to such a claim is:
I think that in three months you can make a breakthrough … the point where you feel now I’ve really achieved something. I’m saying you have enough of a sense… now, maybe you understand some of the mini stories. You have that confidence: I’m going to make it.
That’s a much milder claim.
I get the feeling someone else wrote the text summary at the link.
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I read Steve Kaufmann’s “The Linguist: A Personal Guide to Language Learning.” I was particularly curious about how he learned French, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, when he was young. Clearly he went gung-ho immersion in all three cases.
But the specifics of what he did, for how long and with what results aren’t clearly spelled out for those of us interested in such details.
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You surely know this, but he had one on one tuition for Japanese paid for by the Canadian government. I think Chinese was the same. I suspect he had French at school, so he had a strong foundation, then he lived in France for a year or two. He has a gregarious confident personality which is surely very important. Anyway, the way he learnt all three is quite different to the methods he proselytises here. And of course Chinese and Japanese don’t have verb conjugations, cases and grammatical genders.
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I think each person learns languages at a different rate. I learned German exclusively though comprehensible input for 12 months and when I took a trip to Austria I was able to have a conversation lasting around an hour with someone in a cafe. I wasn’t perfect by any means and there were times when I had to use an english word here and there, but largely I understood everything they said and they could understand me just fine. I was also able to talk with a guy about donations for children since it was around Christmas time. Really, the only time I struggled was when I was shopping for a present for my sister in law the sales lady was speaking so fast I couldn’t understand a word.
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zoran，博客做了限制吗，我用lingq的导入插件导入这篇文章，但是没有成功，只导入一个标题
I always considered the articles posted on the webite with their links distributed on the forums from “Steve” were merely ghostwritten. The link to the Internet Archive I provided above indicates that at least some were most likely originally written by Steve and later reworked. The fact that they have been reworked multiple times with the style becoming more edited (eg. with videos embedded, restyling, etc.) gives the impression that they were at the very least edited by someone else, not Steve himself, especially considering Steve no longer works at LingQ. I suspect the marketer has taken some “professional licence” to rework Steve’s article here to better achieve the goal of sales.
Steve’s YouTube videos are clearly him though. I watch his videos but don’t bother reading the LingQ marketing material on the website.
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My comment on engaging with the language was irony, I thought you’d realise! The advice is indeed very vague. A lot of language learning advice is really just an advert for the content creator’s product(s) mixed in with anecdotal advice that may or may not be applicable to the reader.
I agree.
And research suggests we don’t all learn the same way.
I would be interested to know details of your study methodology, as CI is a vague term, the devil is in the details.
Nay, missed that one 
But I wasn’t offended or so. I just tried to clear up what I considered a misunderstanding.
Yea I don’t think that is really accurate if you wanna get to a high level. It takes a lot longer than that. I did 1500 hours of dreaming Spanish and while I know a lot of Spanish I’m not where I thought I would be. It would probably take double that to reach a high level.
Here’s a good video about a woman learning German through comprehensible input. She claims she didn’t do much read mostly listening and anki. https://youtu.be/fgx090oikks?si=2_f2JAcYU1L8Qw5m
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