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Break even study hours | ||
Tags: Poll | Time to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6340 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 9 of 17 28 August 2010 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Sorry if I was unclear - I'm not asking for advice here; just a number. I'm very interested in your opinions on
where the break-even point is. I put in an explanation of why I'm interested, and some interpreted that as a cry for help. If you really really feel a need to help me, you might want to ask me what my study plan is first.
Please elaborate, and in your elaboration, please explain how focusing on objectives will allow me determine how many languages I can study at once.
I think it's fine, and similar to what I do.
More viable than what?
This is similar to what I'm doing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| michaelmichael Senior Member Canada Joined 5047 days ago 167 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 10 of 17 28 August 2010 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
More viable than doing 3/2 languages at once Edited by michaelmichael on 29 August 2010 at 4:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6229 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 11 of 17 29 August 2010 at 6:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I'm not really convinced that there is such a thing as a break-even point.
There are languages I've studied quite a lot, with incredibly poor methods (my earliest excursions into independent language learning, years ago). A "break even" point for the non-Italian Roman languages in that set was quite a low number, but I don't think I ever hit it for German or Japanese in those days, despite far more study. It was also a much higher number for Italian (my strongest Romance language, and the one I most actively worked on) than for the ones which were piggybacking on comparison to it. If I read something about the major phonological shifts between two related languages, it takes well under an hour, and I retain the information, and gain a passive understanding of perhaps thousands of words. I wouldn't call an hour the break-even point, though. An hour of L-R or any courseware I've ever used, followed by a break of a year, does not have impressive results. Continual improvement is a useful concept. Taking a break, and dusting things off more quickly also is. Break-even points are a seductive idea, but I'm not particularly convinced that they can be usefully determined a-priori. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5063 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 12 of 17 29 August 2010 at 6:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm not clear on what is meant by a "break even point." Is this the point when fluency begins, or what? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6340 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 13 of 17 29 August 2010 at 7:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Interesting opinion Volte.
For the purpose of this poll, I'm defining the break even point as
Theoretically 1) if you study less than the minimum number of hours per year, you will never become fluent 2) If you study more than the minimum number of hours per year, you will eventually become fluent so studying exactly the minimum number of hours per year is an imaginary "break even" From the preliminary poll results, it looks like very few people here believe 30 minutes a day is enough to learn a language. Thoughts? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5187 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech | Message 14 of 17 29 August 2010 at 7:34am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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For basic fluency I would say about 500 hours a year. If you follow the 10,000 hour theory, you need to put in about 1,000 hours a year (3 hours a day) for ten years to reach the 10,000 mark, so I figure half that would make you able to achieve and maintain basic fluency. Edited by JPike1028 on 29 August 2010 at 7:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5171 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 15 of 17 29 August 2010 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Could you refresh our (ie. my) memory: what exactly is the 10,000 hour theory? If you spend 3 hours a day studying and you aren't fluent in 5 years, something deeply wrong with either you, or your method. I could never sustain such a regimen and I became fluent in many languages in a fraction of that time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6699 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 17 30 August 2010 at 12:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The theory suggests that you should put in 10 000 hours to become an expert in your field.
While I agree that studying three hours a day for five years should lead to good skills in a language, the definition of "studying" and "fluency" is vague. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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