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How long do you need to acquire fluency in a foreign language?
This is a very important question, as it can be decisive in your decision to study that
language or not.
Perhaps you have already visited some foreign language institute in your neighborhood and
asked how long it will take for you to be fluent.
And you may have been very frustrated to be told that you will need five years to reach
an advanced level and perhaps 10 years to complete all school training until you reach
fluency.
Today, we are going to make some important clarifications about the time you need in
order to be fluent in your desired language.
How long do you need to become fluent in a foreign language?
First, it is important to make a useful definition of what fluency means.
If you think of fluency on the terms of the language school, you will really need more
than 10 years (if you only have classes twice a week) to be able to achieve fluency, that
is, to communicate perfectly as if you were a native speaker of that language.
In the European model, this is called the C2 level, which indicates mastery or proficiency.
And the C2 level means that you:
- Can easily understand practically everything heard or read.
- Can summarize information from different spoken and written sources, reconstructing
arguments in a coherent presentation.
- Can express yourself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating tones
of meaning even in the most complex situations.
Perfect fluency means expressing yourself perfectly, understanding perfectly and also
having such a good pronunciation that native speakers would have a hard time guessing whether
you're a native or not.
But is it REALLY what you need after all?
When you want to achieve a complex, broad and distant goal, there is a great risk of
losing your motivation.
Primarily, you can experiment by setting smaller, more specialized goals.
For many people, the definition of fluency as the perfect domain in all aspects is a
very distant ideal and therefore not very practical.
If you set a complex and scary goal, it is very likely that your level of motivation
will decrease and you will end up giving up before you even complete the basic level.
You can think of fluency in a different way.
The first thing you need to define is what your necessity is.
Let me share a personal example with you.
Think about what motivates people to travel.
Some people are passionate about art, culture and museums.
Other people like to travel to go shopping.
Other people want to look for romance and adventure.
Photography lovers want to find exotic scenery.
And a lot of people (myself included) have a huge interest in local gastronomy.
But when I travel internationally, I have a great interest in being able to communicate
with local people because I think this is a very interesting part of the trip.
On one of my first independent trips, I went to Germany and bought a kit with a phrase
book, a basic dictionary and an audio file to learn German.
In a few days I was able to prepare myself and interact with the most different types
of people, from students of the same age as me (and after breaking the ice speaking in
German, we later shifted to English and continued the conversation) and I also spoke to older
people when I would go in the local markets, and these were people who communicated only
in German with me.
When I communicated with them in German, of course I made several grammar and pronunciation
mistakes, but the most important goal was achieved.
I managed to communicate, I managed to understand others and to make myself understood.
And even today I have wonderful memories from that time.
It was an unforgettable trip.
I am telling you this story so that you can clearly think about what your main objective
is.
I didn’t achieve fluency in German, but I managed to fulfill my goal.
What about you?
Do you want to interact with local people?
Do you need to read books?
Want to watch movies without subtitles?
Want to listen to music and understand the lyrics?
Do you want to use the foreign language in your work?
See how each of these objectives will require an emphasis on different aspects, whether
in listening, expression, or reading.
You need to know where to dedicate your focus.
Increase your learning speed by focusing on what is most relevant in your current knowledge-building
phase.
The myth that it takes years or even decades to master a language ends up discouraging
anyone thinking of learning a new language.
So you must consciously accelerate the speed of your learning.
This prevents a very common situation that happens with people who choose a language,
enroll in a course, study grammar, buy books.
And, without seeing much progress, they end up giving up halfway through the journey.
In comparison, few people are dedicated to learning how to learn other languages, to
consciously accelerate learning.
The truth is that it can end up being very difficult to learn a language without understanding
what are the various factors that influence the progress and speed of knowledge acquisition.
For example, mother tongue and foreign language families influence the speed of learning.
If your native language is Portuguese, you will need less hours of study to become fluent
in Spanish than in Japanese.
Language families will determine the number of different elements you need to learn, from
the written alphabet to grammatical logic.
From the most common words to the basic sounds of that spoken language.
That is why a native Spanish speaker will find it easier to learn Latin family languages,
such as Portuguese or Italian.
Or why a native German speaker will easily master Germanic languages ​​like English
or Swedish.
Put intensity into your studies, so that you will learn much faster.
To do this, you will need to prioritize the language and leave other responsibilities
aside.
Do you know how many hours you need to study per day to master a new language?
Some research institutes say the ideal for a normal learning day would be four hours
of study.
Are you dedicating yourself to this intensity?
If you dedicate less time in a day, you will need more days to achieve the desired fluency.
If someone is devoting more productive hours of study than you, that person will learn
faster.
In that case, it is important to increase the intensity of your study.
Only then will you accelerate your results.
Evaluate the importance of the language you want to learn and you may find it a good choice
to put other responsibilities aside temporarily.
Of course, time is not the only thing that matters.
Someone who studies two hours a day with full focus and the right strategy can learn faster
than someone who studies four hours with little concentration.
Adjust your expectations.
Frustration only appears when there is a disconnection between our expectations and reality.
Studying a language and not being able to speak, listen, read or write is a frustration
that leads many people to give up halfway.
The secret to avoiding this is to adjust your expectations to reality.
You must set realistic goals.
So, if you don't become fluent in a few weeks, you won't end up frustrated.
To maintain realistic expectations, have a good assessment of the complexity of the language
you are studying.
Be clear about the amount of hours you have available to study and what your motivation
is.
For example, if you speak Portuguese and want to learn Spanish to travel throughout South
America, you will face a much easier task than if you wanted to learn Japanese to get
a job as a director in a company in Tokyo.
If you have simpler goals, you will achieve results faster.
And you can filter what types of materials you are going to use in your learning.
You will make your process more efficient.
Understand that total fluency will require more effort and, therefore, will consume more
time.
If you just want to interact with people on a trip, you don't have to be fluent.
Just be able to communicate and understand what others are saying.
Be careful not to overdo in your studies and try to acquire more fluency than necessary.
For example, it is a bad choice to spend hours training the perfect pronunciation of some
words when you have not yet mastered some basic grammar rules, such as conjugating verbs.
Keep your goal in mind.
Learning a lot more than your goal can be a waste of time, especially considering that
you probably have little time available.
To learn languages faster, do a simulated immersion.
Change your consumption of cultural production by pretending that you are in another country.
Unfortunately, only few people have the opportunity to travel to spend a year or more living abroad
to immerse themselves in the language.
If you have that opportunity, take advantage.
If not, simulate an immersion.
Listen to songs or podcasts in your chosen language, watch movies and series without
subtitles or with subtitles in the language you are learning, read books in the original
language, subscribe to foreign YouTube channels.
Arata Academy has channels in Portuguese, English, Spanish, Italian and others that
are being planned.
The same can be done in the physical world.
A really cool example is putting post-its on the objects you use the most.
Write the name of that object in another language and use stickers to identify them.
Make arrangements with the people you can communicate with in the foreign language,
either speaking, writing emails or using the phone to exchange messages and audios.
In short, do what you can to maximize your daily contact with the language you want to
learn.
You can speed up your language learning when you know what the most important aspects you
need to master are.
Each goal has a specific set of techniques for you to master.
I invite you to visit https://arata.se/speaklanguages ​​to learn about the special class of
the How to Learn Languages ​​course and use more efficient learning strategies.