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Time limits

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Journeyer
Triglot
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United States
tristan85.blogspot.c
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 Message 9 of 17
26 November 2010 at 6:35pm | IP Logged 
CheeseInsider wrote:
Hobbema wrote:
Good question, I've wondered that myself. I'm not criticizing, I've just not myself been able to accomplish that.

I myself don't have time limits set. I do this as a hobby with possible long term business applications. But I can tell you that even after hours and hours and hours of study I can't say I'm fluent in anything.

Based on my experience, and what I've read elsewhere, I think it's realistic with casual, semi-disciplined self study to become "fluent" in 5-8 years.


Fluent in 5-8 years? That's incredibly pessimistic...


I also feel that this is significantly more than enough time to become fluent. Depending on what your particular goals or skill sets you are after, one can be come quite competent in a language in a year or less. Even if your goals are to be very advanced in a language, 5-8 years is still plenty of time, I'd think.
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leosmith
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 Message 10 of 17
26 November 2010 at 8:04pm | IP Logged 
hrhenry wrote:
I'm curious as to how everyone arrives at their specific time periods.

When I started learning Japanese, I decided I really wanted to impress and become near native within a year. As I approached
the year end, I realized it was harder than I thought, and set my sights on 2 years. I set a limit this time because I didn't want
to spend so much of my time learning languages. Approaching the end of my 2nd year, I was really stressed out because I
needed to quit shortly, and I hadn't reached a level that I felt was reasonable to stop study. It wasn't until I started studying
Mandarin, and decided not to put a limit on my Japanese, that the stress went away. This is my 6th year of studying Japanese,
although I only add new material about 1 month per year, and I still haven't reached this forum's definition of basic fluency
because I can't read a newspaper. I study 4 other languages too, and put no limits on any of them.

Even though I don't set time limits, my study goal is to reach a level where merely using the language is enough to
sustain/improve. So I will stop studying a well learned language. For example, I reached this level in French after a little over
a year. Now all I do is read novels, watch movies and converse with a language partner. This is fantastic for me - I love using
languages, but don't like studying them.

All this being said, I think it's very helpful setting time goals on specific exercises, books, etc. For example, I had a goal of
learning 20 kanji a day in RTK1. Goals and time limits can be helpful, but a time limit may not be suitable for an entire
language.
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Splog
Diglot
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anthonylauder.c
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 Message 11 of 17
26 November 2010 at 8:33pm | IP Logged 
CheeseInsider wrote:

Fluent in 5-8 years? That's incredibly pessimistic...


9 years from now, it may well seem incredibly optimistic.
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Journeyer
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
tristan85.blogspot.c
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946 posts - 1110 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, German
Studies: Sign Language

 
 Message 12 of 17
26 November 2010 at 8:36pm | IP Logged 
leosmith wrote:
Goals and time limits can be helpful, but a time limit may not be suitable for an entire language.


Very wise! Thank you for saying that.
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Andy E
Triglot
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 Message 13 of 17
27 November 2010 at 12:13am | IP Logged 
Splog wrote:
9 years from now, it may well seem incredibly optimistic.


LOL! Now there speaks a man after my own heart...

The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know.


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garyb
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 Message 14 of 17
27 November 2010 at 12:37am | IP Logged 
I chose my goal of being able to speak French well by next June because I'm going to a festival in France so it'll be a perfect chance to use and test my skills, and because it seemed like a realistic time scale (1 year).

I did a similar but far shorter term thing for Italian - I arranged a fairly last-minute trip to Italy and decided to try and get a basic grasp of the language in the 2 weeks before. I wasn't able to speak that much, but my ability to understand the general idea of an article or a conversation was surprisingly decent (a combination of me learning basic verbs and phrases, the similarities with French, and the fact that Italians tend to speak quite slowly and clearly).

I definitely work better when I have a deadline - originally my plan was just to "improve my French" and guess what, I didn't have much motivation. Now that I have a concrete time I'm much more keen and want to get as good at it as I can for then. It's the same in other areas of life - if I have a show coming up soon I'll practice guitar a lot more, and if a work project's due soon then I'll happily work away at it all day rather than visiting this site and Facebook every hour.
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Dragonsheep
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 Message 15 of 17
27 November 2010 at 4:13am | IP Logged 
Well, despite the pessimism here with classes, hundreds of nonnative kids in highschool do get 5's on the language AP Exams. That's 4 years of study for fluency.

(I find the AP exams are quite intensive and are a bit beyond basic fluency.) Now, AP is supposed to be at the level of a third year college course.

4 years of highschool level study = 3 years of highschool level study

Now, since self study is supposedly faster than classes, I think 3yrs> is possible if you're going to be really intensive about it.

Of course, many don't have the time to treat language learning with such importance, but it thousands of college kids do become fluent in 3yrs>. Of course, this is out of the hundreds of thousands that are taking language courses, but it is possible.
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Journeyer
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
tristan85.blogspot.c
Joined 6628 days ago

946 posts - 1110 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, German
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 Message 16 of 17
27 November 2010 at 5:10am | IP Logged 
Dragonsheep wrote:
Of course, many don't have the time to treat language learning with such importance, but it thousands of college kids do become fluent in 3yrs>. Of course, this is out of the hundreds of thousands that are taking language courses, but it is possible.


Most the kids who become fluent in a studied language during either high school or college become fluent not just because of their classes but because they study abroad. One year/semester of exposure does wonders compared to three or four years of study. If you are under a deadline and are able to do it, especially if you are a student, I'd recommend this. I can vouch for it from personal experience: one year in Mexico during high school and one year in Germany during college brought both my languages to basic fluency.


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