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Learn any languages in 3 months | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5226 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 25 of 36 21 June 2014 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
I do not doubt that there are people who can learn a language to perfection all by themselves without talking to natives and without visiting the country of the language. And, of course, there are individuals here in Quebec who have lived here all their lives and do not speak a word of French despite having a French-speaking spouse. But in the latter case, with which I'm more familiar, I'll have to say that these individuals are on the verge of extinction. Although they might not like it, a non-francophone person under the age of 30 (and even at any age) wanting to work in Quebec is busy learning French. That is the meaning of factor 5 that I stated above. But the point of all this, as another poster has remarked, is that these factors are conducive to rapid learning. They are not sine qua non for learning a language. Lest we forget, emk who has written extensively on learning French is married to a French-speaker, hears French continuously spoken around the house and has had the opportunity to use French in travels to Quebec (and France, I assume) and with a tutor. This in no way diminishes emk's outstanding accomplishment. Similarly, I point to the fact that Europeans have a distinct advantage over us North Americans in terms of accessibility of certain languages. Sure, in large cities we have pockets of immigrant communities that provide some (often meagre) opportunities to practice a language, but how does that compare to living in Europe where one can spend a day or a weekend immersed in any of many languages? And I need hardly mention all the opportunities available to young Europeans who want to study or work in different countries. Edited by s_allard on 22 June 2014 at 3:25pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 26 of 36 21 June 2014 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
Edited by Serpent on 21 June 2014 at 4:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4507 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 27 of 36 25 June 2014 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
Just wanted to focus on this one part of your post, emk. What would you do different if you were to start all over again knowing what you know now? And which resources would you use? 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Silvance Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5290 days ago 57 posts - 81 votes Speaks: English*, Pashto Studies: Dari | Message 28 of 36 03 July 2014 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Having been here at DLI learning Pashto for roughly 11 months, and sitting at maybe a
low to mid B2, I will say there's no way I could've reached fluency in this language in 3 months. Not only is it a strange writing system (arabic script but with 42 letters instead of whatever 20 something arabic has) but the language discount is almost nonexistent (unless you're learning Pakistani pashto, which we're not.) I've had roughly of 1350 class hours with minimal outside studying to reach this level, and I still have 5 months to go. Hopefully I'll be C1 (3/3/2 DLPT) by the end. Unfortunately, unlike the FSI and DLI courses for Cat 1 and 2 languages, there are few useful Pashto resources outside of a fairly bad Pimsleur course and the materials we have for class. Edited by Silvance on 03 July 2014 at 5:34pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 5880 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 29 of 36 27 October 2014 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For me reaching B2 is fluency. I think it is very hard even for an experienced learner to reach that level in 3 months. It's possible, but really hard. I did reach a low B2 level in Spanish after 3 months, however I already had a small basis in the language and knew French before. If you don't have some sort of a basis in the language or know a related language, then it will be almost impossible to reach B2 in 3 months. Of course individual experiences will vary.
PS: just to clarify, the 3 months of Spanish was done while living in Spain taking intensive courses... I would never be able to do it living outside the country and doing self-study Edited by showtime17 on 27 October 2014 at 12:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4049 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 30 of 36 27 October 2014 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What we have to understand here is that any in this context means "a well attested national language with resources aplenty", for which use the choice of word could be... better. Also if we presume, let's say, that 500 hours* is enough study for B2 in such a language then three months of full time work, nine to five with weekends off would actually yield almost exactly 500 hours. The efficacy is of course greatly dependant on the skills and materials of the learner.
So yes, it's possible but it's a whole lot more situational than the lifestyle gurus would like you to believe. *(arbitrary number, I will not respond to anybody contesting this) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 31 of 36 27 October 2014 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, I love how here on HTLAL any really means any. Outside of the forum it's just standard average European.
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lemberg1963 Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States zamishka.blogspot.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4035 days ago 41 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Ukrainian* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Polish | Message 32 of 36 29 October 2014 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Short answer to OP:
If the language is related to your own, it is possible to reach basic oral fluency and possible but very improbable to reach B2 fluency. If the language is unrelated to your own, it is basically impossible to reach any level of fluency in 3 months. Long Answer to OP: WARNING: This analysis mixes different studies across different languages, methods and variables. This is napkin math meant to give us some context. I personally found it useful to frame the Fluent in 3 Months dream within the context of some numbers. Doing the math was eye opening for me. A long time ago I found this neat list of FSI (supposedly) class time estimates to reading and writing fluency for various languages: https://voxy.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2011/03/110329-VOXY-HARDLANGUAGES-FINAL-WIDE .png These hour estimates are consistent with the Deutsche Welle, FIAF etc. estimates for class time to reach B2 As others have pointed out, FSI estimates are based on roughly 5 hours in class and 4 hours studying, but I make it 1:1 for my own calculations because making Anki cards does take time. So for a native English-speaker to reach fluency in French would take roughly 1200 hours, which is 13.33 hours per day if you want to do it in three months. Okay, that's kinda possible, I guess...What about Chinese? 4400 hours over 90 days is 48.88 hours per day. Literally impossible. Over 6 months it's still literally impossible, requiring 24.44 hours of study every day. Even the French in 3 months estimate of 13hrs/day is not very realistic, so we have to redefine by what we mean as fluency. There's a bunch of research out there that can give us a place to start. Nation and Laufer use 95% vocabulary coverage (+2-3% proper noun coverage) as where adequate comprehension happens. It's an arbitrary number (why not 94%?) but it's a number that appears elsewhere (2 sigma in statistics), so it's comfortable to use. (Correction: I reviewed the literature again (Laufer, 1989; Hu and Nation, 2000) and this is not arbitrary. This is the point where there is a meaningful jump in a person's ability to infer meaning of unknown words correctly based on the context of the sentence it is in, which to me sounds as good a definition of fluency as any) The research (links at end) I've seen suggests 95% oral vocab coverage happens just a bit over 3000 most frequent words. 95% written vocab coverage happens somewhere between 5000 and 9000 most frequent words depending on the text and topic. At B2 we're trying to be comfortable in varied contexts, so 8000+ words is a better estimate for our purposes. So what does all of this mean for us? If we're reaching for basic oral fluency instead of B2, then: 3000 words/8000 words=.375 * 1200 hours= 450 hours or 5 hours per day over 3 months for a western european language like French. For a language like Arabic, that's .375 * 4400 hours = 1650 or 18.33 hours per day, so basically impossible. The reason I say impossible is because you'd be sleeping 5.5 hours a day for 3 months straight, which is bound to destroy your memory consolidation and slow down your progress. An interesting (to me at least) calculation, is that this 450 hours in a 1:1 ratio is about 225 hours of directed learning which puts you in comfortable A2/very early B1 on the CEFR guidelines, which sounds about right for where we would want to be with this goal of basic everyday oral fluency. Also, trying to do 3000 words in 90 days means you're learning 33.33 new words per day, which is actually around my personal limit based on experience. 40 is too much, 30 is doable with effort or cognates, 20 is comfortable. Trying to get to B2 in 90 days would mean 88.88 new words per day. Possible? Maybe, good luck with that. So in conclusion, what's a reasonable expectation for B2 fluency? It will depend on the learner, target language and desired goals. I do about 3 hours per day of study (including talking, reading, writing, listening, watching tv etc) and 25 new words. With a European language, this means about a year to B2 for me, which sounds about right. Research: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/April2010/articles/laufer.pdf http://www.scribd.com/doc/35527699/Spanish-Word-Frequency-St udy Edited by Lemberg1963 on 30 October 2014 at 12:01am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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