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Learn any languages in 3 months | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 9 of 36 18 June 2014 at 8:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
A2 to B2 in four months is very impressive. So I guess that's A0 to B2 in about six months? You got a B2 certificate, and so your "B2" was strong, but I wonder what people generally mean when they talk about getting to B2. It's almost a truism that each of the levels takes longer to get through. I've been at B2 for German at some level for a year at least, with my language level improving continually over this period. I get the impression that when people talk about being B2 they often imply, or at least people think of them, being a really solid B2-to-B2+, close to C1 - I think that's for instance the level people are implying when they say that B2 is sufficient to start university - when in fact they are maybe B2-, just barely scraping over the edge of B1. I'm curious how much you think your B2 has improved since you got your certificate. If you haven't reached C1 yet, I assume you are a much better B2 than your language certificate would imply. Edited by patrickwilken on 18 June 2014 at 8:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 36 18 June 2014 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Nothing to slightly A2 in about 6 months, using Assimil, though I could do it faster knowing what I know now, and if I put in a lot more hours per day. The reason that I made it from A2 to B2 so quickly was that I put in my 30 best hours per week, and I was basically living in immersion and I kept having to take those weird urgent naps that happen when language students get in over their heads.
I could have passed the exam sooner, actually—I scored about 78/100 points, and a passing score is only 50. And the DELF B2 is apparently more challenging than some other B2 exams, according to Serpent. So if you don't mind cutting it close, you could shave some time on that end, too. So given my personal experience, and the fact tha FSI can ram people to C1 French (well, ILR 3/3, which is supposedly the same) in 6 months using somewhat ruthless methods, I can definitely believe that it's possible to reach B2 in 3 months. But unless you're getting a huge discount from learning your second or third Romance language (like Benny did), getting to B2 in 3 months is probably going to hurt. And if you stack too many factors against the student (a complicated writing system, a really distant language, less than ideal conditions), I think 3 months will rapidly slide out of reach of virtually everybody. I mean, I actually do believe that Khatzumoto reached a wobbly C1 level after 18 months of studying Japanese (IIRC, he did job interviews in Japanese for Japanese companies and got hired somewhere around that point), but then again, he calls his site "All Japanese All the Time" for a reason.
B2 is sufficient to start university for the simple reason that if you scrape out a pass on an official B2 exam, even after lots of exam prep, there are plenty of real universities who will admit you. Nobody says that your first six months aren't going to suck horribly, and you'll certainly need to pick your classes carefully and study hard. But even a weak B2 can read a high-brow newspaper article with good comprehension, and either write an essay or give a short presentation defending an opinion, and that's apparently enough to get started.
Oh, yeah, my French is much better than it was two years ago. I'm pretty certain that if all I wanted was a C1 certificate on my wall, it wouldn't be impossible to arrange with some focused study. But right now, I'm busy with other goals, as you can see in my log. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 11 of 36 18 June 2014 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I guess I just think by definition the border of B1-B2 is defined by the test (though people might take it after they have moved a fairway past the border. But as you say it's only after two years that you are approaching the C1 border. OK people could do it faster perhaps, but there are still alot of different levels to B2 - all of them by definition higher than the official B2 exam. BTW: Now that I am further into language study I really have began to doubt the idea that anyone could get to C1 in six months. Perhaps if they are in the military, but certainly not diplomats in the relative comfort of the FSI (I know they say it's hellish, but it's not hellish enough I think). Say you need about 8000 words to really start getting comfortable. You'd need to be learning close to 50 words per day, every day for six months. And then of course you need to learn the grammar and get exposure to lots and lots of language. Perhaps it's possible to get that in six months, but I seriously doubt it. I think you could get to B2 in a related language, but C1 seems seriously too hard. Edited by patrickwilken on 18 June 2014 at 1:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 36 18 June 2014 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
FSI study loads are supposed to be 5 hours of classes and 4 hours of homework per day, five days per week. There are very few people who've written a diary of the experience, but I am aware of one student who kept a blog for her Chinese ILR 2 course and graduated slightly early with a good score. Here's how she described it (I've linked to this before):
So on a bad day, yes, FSI may ask you to learn 140 new Chinese vocabulary words in a single day and to be able to use them very soon after. And remember, IIRC, incoming FSI students already speak an average of 2.1 languages. But even so, I've read that FSI ILR 3/3 students often have trouble keeping up with fast conversations between natives. I think in theory that the CEFR checklists want C1 students to be able to do that, even if the exams don't always require it in practice. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 13 of 36 18 June 2014 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I guess the critical question is now many new words on average per day do they want you to learn. Or how many in total. I simply find it hard to believe that any one can consistently learn 140 new words a day for months on end. There are hardish limits in people's ability to consolidate new information. When I was doing Anki I could learn about 30 cards per day, and that took me an hour. Ok perhaps I was a bit perfectionist, but still I can't imagine anyone learning 100 cards per day every day. My guess, and it's only a guess, is that most of the FSI graduates are closer to a solid B2 than C1 - a solid B2 will allow you to read/talk etc. The descriptions of the US military training in Santa Cruz (?) that one of the graduates talked about a year ago, was fascinating, and did sound brutal and I think (please correct me if I am wrong) they were expected to learn 40? 60? new words per day. Edited by patrickwilken on 18 June 2014 at 3:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| hobom Triglot Newbie Joined 4220 days ago 33 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 14 of 36 20 June 2014 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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But what about L-R? Maybe I am being a bit naive, but wasn't the consensus around here
that using the Listening Reading Method you could learn a language fairly quickly? Provided that one actually puts in the necessary amount of hours, atamagaii claimed that you could learn a language in one or two weeks? Of course that was only concerning the passive skills, but still? Has this ever been reduplicated by anybody here on the forum? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 36 20 June 2014 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Actually one of the first L-R posts implied that siomotteikiru/atamagaii reached a decent level in German after some 40 hours of Kafka in shorter time (possibly ~10 hours a day for four days). The important points are intensity and varied vocabulary. I have yet to do intensive L-R - I simply find it hard to squeeze in 10 hours, let alone 5-6 hours in a normal day, but I might try it in the near future.
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| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 16 of 36 20 June 2014 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
16 hours per day (assume sleep - no time for food/hygiene etc) x 7 days per week x 2 weeks = 224 hours. Assume "to learn a language" = 8000 words. Therefore need to learn a new word every 36 seconds. Note: above assumes no time spent on grammar, native materials etc. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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