It seems like everybody nowadays wants to "reach fluency in three
months" or "learn a language in 90 days". But is that even possible? Or
is it just another Internet myth? The answer might surprise you!
Hey, I am Luca Lampariello, I am a language coach who speaks 14 languages. and on this
channel I help people learn foreign languages more efficiently, faster and in a fun way.
So, can you learn a language in 3 months? Let’s find out!
Search Google or YouTube for nearly anything related to language learning nowadays,
and you'll find all sorts of videos, blog posts and content about "learning
a language fast". It's not uncommon to see people claiming that it's possible
to reach fluency in a few months, a few days, or even 24 hours!
It's gotten so bad that one of the most common "fast" goals—reaching fluency in
3 months—sounds downright slow compared to a lot of the more outrageous examples.
But in a world where everyone wants fluency fast,
is it even possible to learn a language at that speed? Can you really become fluent in 90 days?
If you ask me, there's some truth to it. But that truth comes with
a lot of qualifiers, and a lot of caveats.
First of all, it's impossible to determine
if someone has "reached fluency" until you define what "fluency" actually is.
Believe it or not, "fluency" is an incredibly vague word,
with no universally agreed-upon definition.
Even within the online language learning community, everyone seems to define "fluent"
in different ways. Because of this, when someone tells me that “I want to be fluent in Russian in
3 months”, I have no idea what they're actually aiming to accomplish. "Fluency" here could mean
anything from "basic conversational skills" to "sounding like an educated native speaker",
and everything in between. That's a massive range in skill levels,
and only a few of those are remotely feasible in a 90-day period.
So in order to determine if it's possible to reach fluency in three months,
we need to settle on a definition of "fluency", and go from there.
To me, being fluent means being comfortable in expressing yourself in most situations,
as well as comfortably understanding what is being said to you.
In short, I believe fluency is about familiarity and comfort with a language.
That's a good start, but to make things even clearer, let's also define what fluency is NOT.
To me, fluency does not mean speaking perfectly like a native. Nor does it
mean understanding everything you read or hear.
That right there is a significant departure from the concept of fluency held by a lot of people,
particularly non-language learners. It's not uncommon to hear people use "perfectly" and
"fluently" interchangeably when talking about someone else's language skills. But again,
that's why we're defining our terms.
To make my definition of fluency even more concrete, I'd like to use an objective set
of standards, one that is used by language learners and professionals all over the world:
the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, or CEFR for short. Put simply,
the CEFR is a set of guidelines for describing achievement and ability in language learners.
As part of these guidelines, there are six "reference levels" that describe the
full range of skill levels in a foreign language.
From lowest to highest, these levels are A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2.
The full details of this framework are beyond the scope of this video,
but if you'd like to learn more about it, please check the description box for more information.
For now, though, I just want to touch upon the B2 level, which is the CEFR
level that I believe most accurately corresponds to my definition of fluency.
According to the Council of Europe, a language learner able to speak at a B2 level:
Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction
with native speakers quite possible, and Can take an active part in discussion
in familiar contexts, accounting for and sustaining [their] views.
That, in a nutshell, is what fluency means to me.
A comfortable level of language skill that corresponds to a B2 on the CEFR scale.
So, with that in mind, let's take another shot at answering our key question:
Is it possible to reach fluency in three months?
Well, I've got good news, and bad news.
I'll start with the bad news: no, it's not possible to reach fluency (again,
a B2 level) in three months. I've met a lot of language learners in my life,
and I've never met anyone who has managed to become fluent in that time period.
But this is why defining fluency is so important. I say it's not possible,
but that's according to my own definition. If I were using other definitions of fluency,
then my answer might be different.
Anyway, enough with the bad news. What about the good news?
Well the good news is that even though I believe it's impossible
to become fluent in three months - no matter the language - it is certainly
possible to make a lot of progress TOWARDS fluency in that time period!
Believe me, I've met many, many people who managed to learn a heck of a lot
of language in a three-month time span. More than you can imagine,
in fact! And at the end of those three months, those same people were
well-poised to make a solid push towards fluency in the coming months, or years.
So while I don't believe fluency is a worthwhile target in three months,
I certainly believe it's worthwhile to learn as much as you can in that same time period.
But that leads us to a different question: if you can't reach fluency in three months,
how much CAN you learn in that time?
Returning to our trusty CEFR scale,
I believe the answer lies at the level just below B2, which, naturally, is called B1.
According to the CEFR, the B1 is the first level where a learner can be considered an
"independent user" of the language. Personally, I like to refer to this level of skill as
"conversational fluency"—you're not fully fluent yet, but you're comfortable enough to speak and
interact with others in a relatively smooth way, on a variety of common, everyday topics.
Diving a little deeper into the CEFRs definition of the B1 level,
we learn that someone at a B1 level: Can understand the main points of clear
standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc.
Can deal with most situations likely to arise while traveling
in an area where the language is spoken. Can produce simple connected text on topics
which are familiar or of personal interest. Can describe experiences and events, dreams,
hopes & ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.
In most cases, I believe such a level is entirely attainable by most dedicated language learners,
so long as a few conditions are met. These conditions (in no particular order) are:
Time on task
The "distance" between your native and target languages, and
Life circumstances that are favorable for language learning
Let's talk about each of these a little more in depth:
First, "time on task":
Three months is a little over 90 days. That might sound like a lot of time to get things done,
but if you're an absolute beginner who wants to make a serious push towards a B1 level,
then you're going to have to devote a huge chunk of that time to language learning,
each and every day. And I'm not talking one or two hours; to reach your three-month goal,
you'll have to spend anywhere from three to eight hours a day learning. That's practically
a full-time job! If you don't have that amount of time to devote to your target
language during those three months, it's simply not going to happen.
Next, let's talk about the distance between your native language and your target language.
Your ability to quickly reach a certain skill in your target language will greatly
depend on how similar (or how different) that language is from your mother tongue.
It's important to note here that languages can differ in a wide variety of ways, often all at
the same time. These differences include grammar, pronunciation, intonation, word order, and more.
If the two languages are similar (like, say, English and Dutch),
then great! Reaching B1 in three months is actually quite a reasonable goal for you.
But if the two languages are very different (like, for example,
English and Japanese), even reaching a B1 is unlikely to happen in three months.
Let's make these examples a bit more concrete by taking one sentence,
and translating it across each of these languages.
First, English and Dutch, which are our two "close languages".
I heard that Amsterdam is a fantastic city. I want to live there.
Ik hoorde dat Amsterdam een fantastische stad is. Ik wil daar leven.
Looking at these sentences, it's possible to determine that English and Dutch share
similar vocabulary ("I heard" vs "Ik hoorde", "I want to live there" vs "Ik wil daar leven").
You might also be able to tell that they share a similar word order, too:
I heard that: ik hoorde dat, I want to live there vs Ik wil daar leven)
And these are just the beginning of all the many similarities these two languages share.
For example, they even compose words in similar ways, and share a similar pronunciation, too!
Let's now move on to our more "distant" pair of languages, English and Japanese:
I heard that Amsterdam is a fantastic
city. I want to live there. アムステルダムは素晴らしい街だそうです。ぜひ住んでみたいですね 。
amusuterudamu wa/ subarashii machi da so-u desu. zehi sunde mitaii desu ne.
Looking at the word order, the differences stand out right away. Translated word-by-word,
the Japanese sentence literally means “Amsterdam
fantastic city to be I heard. I there live want to”. Pretty different, huh?
And that's just the beginning. Japanese and English have vastly different sound systems,
grammar patterns, and intonation rules—not to mention the completely different writing systems!
If you're an English speaker who wants to learn Japanese, reaching even a B1 level
is going to take you much, much longer than 90 days. It can be done, for sure,
but the time investment is typically on the scale of a year or more, rather than a few months.
Let's move on to our last influential factor for reaching a B1 in three months:
your life circumstances, and how favorable they are for language learning.
As with any skill, language learning is something you get better at with time and experience. If
you've never learned a language before, it might take you months or years to reach a B1 level in
your first new language, but with every subsequent language after that, things get easier and easier.
For that reason, an experienced language learner will be much more likely to reach
conversational fluency in three months than a complete newbie would. If you know what works,
you can start applying it right away, and that leads to less wasted time overall.
Other aspects of your life can make it easier or harder to learn
languages too. In an earlier example, I mentioned that you need to do a lot
of daily learning to even hope to be able to reach B1 in three months. A
person with a busy work or family life probably won't be able to attempt that.
And then there's the matter of having access to the language you're learning. If you're in
a place where it's difficult to find natives to practice with and good materials to learn from,
then the task of reaching conversational fluency becomes way, way harder than it
would otherwise be. On the other hand, if you're literally IN a country where that language is
the dominant language, things suddenly become a lot more manageable, even in short time frames.
Now that you understand some of the factors that influence how fast a language can be learned,
you'll be better equipped to look at your life and your target language
and determine what kind of language goals are most reasonable for you.
That's all I have for you today, but before we go, let's do a quick recap of what we talked about:
To start, we raised a popular question: is it possible to become fluent in three months?
Then, we talked about how the answer depends on your definition of fluency.
If your definition of fluency is like mine—close to a B2 level on the CEFR scale,
then the answer is no. That being said,
you certainly can still aim to achieve a lot in a three-month period. In fact,
I think reaching a B1 level (the level just below B2) is certainly possible, so long as
certain factors are in place that will help you learn as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The first of these factors is your time on task. If you can spend three to eight hours
each day on language learning, then you'll have a good shot of reaching your goal.
The second of these three factors is how close your target language is to
your native language. If they're very close in structure, vocabulary, and pronunciation,
then learning quickly will be much easier. The last of these factors is your set of life
circumstances. If you've got lots of previous language experience, lots of time, and lots of
access to learning opportunities, then you'll have the opportunity to learn quite quickly.
Okay, that's all for this video. If you'd like to learn more about how I
personally would go about learning as much language as possible within three months,
then check out the link in the description box!
Thanks for watching, and as always: happy language learning!