Keep these language learning benchmarks top of mind
Anchor yourself to them
When you learn languages, the journey often feels long and tedious. You wonder when you will finally reach your goals. Thankfully, after doing 3 years of case studies analyzing how long it takes people to reach different levels of fluency, I learned that there are rough guidelines that work reliably regardless of the language being learned.
100 hours: low-beginner
250 hours: upper-beginner
500 hours: intermediate
1,000 hours: upper-intermediate
2,000+ hours: advanced
Break hours down to days/weeks/months
Knowing that 1,000 hours leads you to an upper-intermediate level isn’t helpful. You need to break it down into days, months, and years. Here are some hypothetical scenarios based on how much study you may choose to do per day, from very intensive to not intensive.
10 hours of study per day
Low-beginner in ~10 days
Upper-beginner in ~25 days
Intermediate in ~50 days
Upper-intermediate in ~3 months
Advanced in ~6 months
5 hours of study per day
Low-beginner in ~20 days
Upper-beginner in ~50 days
Intermediate in ~3 months
Upper-intermediate in ~6 months
Advanced in ~1 year
1 hour of study per day
Low-beginner in ~3 months
Upper-beginner in ~8 months
Intermediate in ~1.5 years
Upper-intermediate in ~3 years
Advanced in ~6 years
30 minutes of study per day
Low-beginner in about ~6 months
Upper-beginner in ~1.5 months
Intermediate in ~3 years
Upper-intermediate in ~6 years
Advanced in ~12 years
You get to choose your pathway. You can take a slow & steady path by doing 30 minutes a day or book off a month from work and do 10 hours a day, propelling yourself forward. It’s totally up to you. Is it worth the trade-off? Is it worth not working for a month to have a new language under your belt or to finish a language you are this close to mastering?
Discipline is the key, no matter what choice you make. Provided you use effective learning methods, you will reach your goals in the expected amount of time.
Thanks for reading!
Azren
Calgary Language Nerds owner
https://azrenthelanguagenerd.com