I asked this question on Facebook and was blown away by the answers. So I’d love to ask you!
How long do *you* think it takes to get fluent in a foreign language?
Just put up your answer in the comments.
For the purpose of this question, take “fluent” as being “understand most things you hear and being able to express just about anything you like.”
Really looking forward to your answer!
Be genki,
Richard
P.S. As a bonus you’ll also have a chance to win a GE CD when you make a comment!
P.P.S. Also if you could mention what languages you are/aren’t fluent in that would really help and/or any reasons for your answer!
Earn More From Your Passion For Teaching English!
What an interesting, challenge question! Wow. I’d love to see the facebook answers.
Well, I think it really depends on the circumstances. It is definitely a difference wether I learn a language in that country, or apart, once a week or daily.
Under best conditions I would say less than half a year.
One hour a week, in a completely out of frame context, 3-4 years.
I’m fluent in German, English, Japanese, without doubt.
I used to be fluent in Indonesian language, but this is more than 20years ago, and unfortunately I’ve never spoken since. However, it was a real experience and excitement “HOW” I got it, and I am pretty certain, that I could back to that level in 2-3 months, if I’d work on it.
Now, I’m really curious what everyone will answer here.
I think the facebook answers are well off the mark. I have been living in Thailand for just over a year and a half and I have picked up quite a few words and one or two phrases, without structured tuition. With a willing student, a good course and teacher, there is no reason why someone could not be fluent in a foreign language within 3-6 months.
If you’re living in the country 3-6 months to get by fluently (maybe not grammatically)! Outside the country on a one hour a week basis with no chance to practise with natives speakers, then quite a bit longer. Skype would be one way to practise speaking to native speakers.
I think it depends on the learner and the place.
Living in the country of the language with language immersion and speaking the 2nd lang. is much quicker. A person who puts much attention into learning can learn in about a year even if they are not in the country of the language but has ample chance to practice speaking.
My children learned their second language in a few months (including playing in that language as well as attending school in that language). I’ve seen adults pick up a language in a year but they applied themselves more than the usual student.
I don’t think any one class is the answer like many wish. There are more factors than the classes.
It really takes a very shiort time for kids to learn Genki English! Teacher factor is very important inside god classroom. With my experifnce using the Genki stuffs,r kids learn very fast and remember very fast with the rhythm , gestures, moves,ROTC. etc! Plus of course a very Genki teacher:-)as for ne and my kids, it only takes a month for ages 1-5 to learn vocabs, songs ( meaning they can sing it) and about two to older kids! That’s Genki that’s fun!
Godspeed !
Wow! Great question! I think, after my 10 years of teaching in Japan, that fluency depends on drive. I’ve seen students “studying” for over 30 years and still can hardly make a complete sentence without thinking. (Usually older folks who claim English as their hobby and use their class time as a chance to socialize. Fair enough, their choice. ) Then again I have students who have gone from total beginner to high intermediate in 1-2 years. I’ve been using the same teaching materials, etc. but I think it all comes down to their self-drive. How badly they want to learn.
it really depends on the environment,
if the person is in Japan, I think it will take longer for most likely 1 – 2 years if the person is willing to talk with you in English.
What I am actually doing right now is to spend as much time with my students such as going to club activities playing with them.. to be honest i spend more time with my students than teachers..
if you are in the country I do agree with Liza.. but 6 – 12 months…
My Eikaiwa students that i teach.. i actually opened up a private facebook group for them to practice their english.
It totally depends on the amount of time and effort you put in, your mother tongue, your environment etc,etc.
For Japanese college students living in Montana and going to a university there, students who where there for 4~5 years spoke English very well. Of course that was after 6 ~ 12 years of English education in Japan.
For me, after, studying Japanese for 12 hours a week for four semesters at university and then after spending a year in Japan, I felt I was fairly fluent. But not able to understand everything said and not able to express everything I wanted to. For some topics you just don’t have the vocabulary you need unless you have experience in that topic either through study or otherwise.
There is no straight answer. After four years at university and four years in Japan, I felt very fluent and could handle simple interpretation jobs on the spot and more demanding ones, just barely,with preparation.
A year or two of living in the country. When I came to Japan I spoke almost no Japanese. Two years later I married a non-English speaking Japanese man. I guess I became fluent enough in 2 years to get married! (My husband still doesn’t speak English. After 35 years my Japanese is pretty good.)
I feel that after 45 years learning English as a native speaker, there are many different levels of fluency. If you want the survival fluency then sure, 3-4 months living in the country of the language learnt may be enough for the common language learner. However to reach full fluency, as to be able to talk on any subject using a considerable vocabulary needed to converse on an advanced level rather than an intermediate level, say IELTS or other, that takes considerable effort and practice so would take much longer and depends wholly on the students dedication. For me as a native speaker and teacher, I consider that I am still learning new vocab every day I read a book, mind you the latest book I am reading is about Quantum Physics.
(-: There’s no one right answer to this question. It depends on a lot of things: your inborn language skills, how many hours a day you study, how effectively you study, and of course, how you define “fluent.” LOL, I still can’t say just about everything I want to say in my native language, English!
But, to toss off an answer, I have observed that most Japanese students become reasonably fluent after 8 to 10 months in a high school or college exchange program. I have no idea how literate they are, but since Japanese English education traditionally emphasized the reading/writing, I suspect they are pretty good at that, too. OTOH, it’s very rare to find a Japanese person who is fluent after six or 10 years of English classes (including juku). It does happen, but usually these are extremely motivated learners who study on their own.
Oh, forgot my details: I became reasonably fluent after a year’s exchange in Nagoya. I am not fluent in Spanish, but have fun trying — I suspect I could become fluent in three to six months in an immersion situation. I have three years of high school Spanish, and sometimes do study spurts in the language. I also had three years of formal Japanese education (including that year in Nagoya).
I’m an English native and I’ve been living in Poland for 4 years now and only know about 100 words! Mind you, it took me 40 years to learn English and I still only know about 18.4% of the entire language (all the words in the dictionary).
I think for an average person with a 40 hour per week job starting at beginner level, 3 years would be a respectable time to pass an upper-intermediate level exam (assuming they did all of their homework!)
This is actually my challenge if I want to pass the Polish citizenship exam – which I do. Wish me luck and no distractions because Polish is one of the hardest languages to learn!
I have been studying spanish since high school and college and that is a scary amount of time. I teach in the summer and become emersed in it. I started private lessons five years ago. When I take lessons and focus I am fluent in about a month. When I come home from teaching and don’t speak, I lose a lot. Being consisent in your studies and usage makes a huge different. I can always understand now after a bilillion years. Hey, I just passed an interview in Spanish. The main thing is to always look and translate wherever you see the other language and it will become natural. I just wish it would last and I didn’t have to start over.
I heard it takes two hours of study every day for two years to get fluent in a language. I have been living in Japan for about three years now and I am still not fluent. So it all depends. Plus if you are living in a foreign country, you are getting more than just two hours of study a day by listening to the language all day.
I think one of the best ways to become fluent in a language is to watch bad, quirky dramas. It must be bad, and very predictable, so you have time to pay attention to the language. These days, of course, you can record it and watch the important (to your studies) bits over and over again, or you can pause it to look up a word on your phone, and listen to a different native pronounce it. Many countries seem to have subtitles for the hearing impaired, too, so it’s one way to pick up literacy, too.
“My” drama was The 101rst Proposal, which really dates me (-:.
I think the language type also affects how long it takes to become fluent in a language. For example, as a native English speaker, I found learning Japanese difficult because there is no similarity to English at all (apart from katakana!!!) Whereas, if I learnt a European language, such as German, Spanish, or French, I think I would pick this up quicker because there are similarities in the language. I mean, German, das ist goot is pretty close to ‘this is good’ in English. In reverse, Chinese and Korean students pick up Japanese way faster than English speakers. Or maybe this is all an excuse to justify my crappy Japanese!!!!
There are many variants in learning another language. To be fluent and be able to speak on any subject would mean a person needs to be immersed in the culture and language for a long period of time. That period of time would depend on their age. Children, adolescents, and early twenties can be fluent MUCH more rapidly than older people. I know college age students that within 2 years are fluent. Yet I also know high school students that are fluent in 1 year when they are working hard on being fluent. Fluency also depends on how much you work at the language. If you read a lot in the foreign language, listen to people (or TV) a lot, and converse unashamedly with people all your waking hours,you’ll be fluent faster.
Hi Richard,
Great question, however difficult to answer. I think it depends on the way how you learn a language and it depends also on your age. We (Dutch family) moved to live in France and our kids, 4 and 6 at that time, learned French in school, the way we learn a first language. After 6 months, they could understand their friends and started to make nice phrases. After a year, they really had the feeling they ‘belonged’ to the rest of the class. If you learn a second or third language in your own country, it depends on the hours you spend to learn, it depends on your teacher and the way he or she teaches. I don’t think it is possible to say you can learn a language in 6 or 12 months. If you learn a foreign language like my kids did, a third language (English in their case) or fourth (German) goes very quickly, like they understand the way you have to learn a language!
Very interesting topic!
I believe that in a full immersion situation..and in a language that pretty much uses the same alphabet it’s easier. I’m totally fluent in three languages (Spanish, English and Italian). My mother tongue is Spanish…I moved to the USA when I was 11 and knew no English. It took me about three months to understand and another three before I decided to start speaking (but I was terribly shy). I moved to Italy when I got married and that was easy..Italian is very similar to Spanish… Within a month my was pretty good. Today, after a life time…I read write and speak all three languages without an accent.
In my teaching experience I have a student who started English lessons with me when she was 5 (two hours a week for 3 years and this past year we increased it to 3 hours a week) She also spends about a month in the US every summer. Today she is 9. She understands pretty much everything anyone says… She reads at her grade level in English and can answer the reading and comprehention questions. Until now I’ve focus on the “Listening and Reading”. She can communicate in English though not totally grammatically correct…but she can express her toughts…her pronunciation is perfect. She surprised me the other day by doing an online grammar game involving the English verb tenses (simple, continuous and perfect–present, past and future) she answered everything right…except the definition of the tense…I’m sure that when she grows up she will be totally fluent in English no accent what so ever!
Have a nice day everyone!
I think it is taking about 5 years to feel at home with a new language.
Hi everyone!
To my mind to be fluent at the age of five is easier than to be fluent at the age of 20. And at the age of 20 than at the age 0f 40 or 50. And this doesn’t mean that older people have less capabilities.
Starting to learn a language people want to talk about things that are meaningful to them. Children’s native language develops in games. So they are happy to learn how to play speaking another language. The main point here is to choose a right game. But with the help of GE we’ve got a plenty of them 🙂
Adult people have different life experiences and opinions on same things, so it’s hard to teach them to express what they think fast .
But if a person teaches him/herself, the prosess can go faster. And if there’s a REAL need in speaking or writing in a foreigh language, then the speed of can be very high. I know a German woman who first had visited Russia in 1992 when she was 48. Since then she had vidited Russia every six months. It took her about three years to begin to talk Russian freely with friends and translate oral speech. But she also took privat lessons in Germany and spent much time practicing at home.
Without practice fluency can be lost. Here in Russia I’ve got not much opportunities to use English or German. So… There’s no limit to perfection!
Interesting question. If you stay in the country itself I think you can be fluent in a couple of months but of course it depends on the person. But if you learn a foreign language in your mother country at school without going to the country itself it can be rather long (like 4 to 5 years and even). But if this person decides to stay for several months in the country where this foreign language is spoken, this person will only need a couple of weeks to become fluently because he has already a certain level.
And of course it depends on the language you’re going to learn as languages have not the same difficulties. Japanese, Chinese and Dutch are considered hard to learn.
Hope this will help you out…
Within the native country
Intensive
For an outgoing and confident individual: 300 hours of intensive study over the course of 15 – 20 weeks.
For a less-confident and more reserved person: 600 hours of intensive study over the course of 30 – 60 weeks.
Non-Intensive
For non-intensive study within the country multiply the hours by 2 and the weeks by 6.
For an outgoing and confident individual: 600 hours over 90 – 120 weeks.
For a less-confident and more reserved person: 1200 hours of intensive study over the course of 180 – 360 weeks.
Outside the country I would multiply everything by 6 or 7.
For people like me, about 30 years of intense immersion. For most of my students starting from ABC, 3 years at 1 hour/week, 50 weeks of the year. (total lesson time, about 150 hours, total study time including HW, 350 hours.
I think it depends on the environment you live in. If you move to the country itself, children at any age can be fluent within months.. I moved to the US when I was 16, and picked up the language in two months. Now, I’m back in Hungary teaching English :-)HOWEVER, speaking is another thing. This really depends on personality… For me, it took 6 years not to worry about my grammar, accent , and pronounciation. I have students of all ages.. little ones pick up Genki English really fast.. amazing!!! Interestingly though, I have siblings attending classes, and while the 6 year old is very active, speaks, and understands everything I tell her during lessons, doesn’t say a word at home.. Meanwhile her brother who is only 3 1/2 and started Genki English 7 months ago, is not only wildly active during lessons but speaks English no matter where he is… can’t shoot him… 🙂 Older ones (above 11) take about 3-4 years to become fluent attending private lessons once a week… but this can change as well .. I’ve had a student I taught for 3 years, and he didn’t even have a notebook, and he passed his intermediate English language exam with 96%.. Sorry to keep writing away but this is a very interesting topic, not to mention the fact that I’ve had 4 coffees so far today to keep me going, and I’m a bit hyeractive.. Love Genki English!!! Good day everyone!
Great question Richard. I have been living in Japan for the past 20yrs and tried to remember how long it took me to be able to survive on a daily basis using Japanese.
I think after the first 6 months of living and concentrating 100% you would be able to master the basic language to a stage that you could maybe go shopping and be able to ask for what you want. I also believe that you not only need to speak the language but you need to think it the language to be able to get to any level of fluency.
Good look with the survey and I look forward to seeing what results you get.
Becoming fluent depends on several factors age, cognitive development, motivation, length of exposition, intensity of exposition to name a few. Individuals in the same setting in a more or less homogenous group may have different learning speeds. I am multilingual English-French-Creole. I did 5 years of French at high school and had only basic notions of the language. I couldn’t understand when someone spoke French. I felt like I started understanding the language when I took it at A Levels in college for 2 years and had a teacher who spoke exclusively in French. Immersion. After the 1st year I could actually communicate with native French persons. However the real breakthrough came when I moved to a French country and lived with a French family. After one year as an Au pair for three kids while attending university my French was perfected. I felt like a true bilingual. My experience and research in language teaching has been with young children. I have mostly observed adults learning languages. In my work and research I have found that generally from the onset a child’s comprehension with a foreign language is very good. Children will process new language data they receive in context. So when greeting kids for the first time and I say “Hello! My name is Zephrine. What’s your name?” 7 out of 10 times children will respond adequately. Some will shyly hide behind a parent. And when I say “How are you? Are you ok? Are you good?” They answer affirmatively. Even as a child arrives and I guide them to the bag area and I tell them “Hang up your bag” the child automatically responds and does as I say. Very rare are the kids who hesitate. The child understands the context and I feel, in a very pragmatic manner, knows intuitively that this is exactly what I’m saying. In a matter of weeks if the child is exposed daily he can very quickly develop near complete comprehension. However, as the child is still learning about the world around him things that are new will be new whether they are introduced in his 1st language or in the 2nd. I have an out of school workshop for kids 3 to 6. After 1 year of English once a week, these kids have developed an excellent comprehension even with more abstract ideas that include time and places outside of the workshop. Oral expression happens during that time but is much slower and the speed depends mainly on the child himself. You might get a child to repeat things in class but has he really assimilated the syntax and lexicon? Can he use it spontaneously in different contexts and substitute forms to create new combinations? Other point: learners (adults or children) who read tend to learn faster than young children who only have the base of what is given to them through oral exchange. That base will depend on how rich the actual content of speech is.
Personally, and based on research, it seems that one year in a sustained immersion setting (partial or full immersion) is enough to achieve a certain level of fluency in a language. Full fluency -using languages interchangeably and with ease in different contexts- usually comes within 3 to 4 years. Children who are in such a setting from a very young age will develop incredible fluency as they grow, develop cognitively and mature emotionally.
I think the reason people are giving such wide and varied answers is because everyone has a different idea of what it means to be fluent.
Even if you give “understand most things you hear and being able to express just about anything you like.” as guidelines. That still means different things to different people.
I find it shocking that people say 3-4 months (unless the languages are really similar to begin with and the studying is intense). A child growing up in the language isn’t even fluent that quickly. A child immersed at a young age with instruction will still take longer.
My definition of fluency is HIGH. Near native is fluency to me.
I would say I was able to get by, carry on conversations and deal with small tasks like getting help and starting contracts after 2 years in University but I would never, ever consider that to be fluent.
There needs to be an ease, a smoothness, a confidence behind the language. A grasp of the cultural intricacies to when and how to use certain words or phrases.
I studied in university for 2 years, have lived in Japan for 5 years and I’m only now starting to be okay with people saying pera pera…
I am a Native English speaker, I speak French fluently (after 12 years of immersion and one year living in France), Japanese I’m starting to feel fluent but still struggle with things like politics, economics, and complex emotional/opinion related things, I speak Spanish at a basic level (reading is stronger) and I’m starting to study Korean.
Totally agree with Alex N.’s comment…To be fluent means that you have total fluency with all aspects of the language (understanding (listening), speaking, reading, writting.
In my case…I lived in Ecuador till I was eleven, speaking only Spanish. Then we moved to Chicago where I did all my schooling in English (I’ve got a Bachelors degree in Natural Science with a Major in Psychology and Spanish Literature) while continuing to speal and study Spanish..At 25 I moved to Italy with my husband and been living here for the past 28 years. What’s my mother tongue? I’m not so sure I can pick one. They are all the same to me. If I’m speaking English I think in English…If I’m speaking Spanish I think in Spanish and the same with the Italian. sometimes it can get confusing when I can or have to use all three at the same time…
When I moved to the US I learned English in three to four months…I mean I could understand pretty much everything…I however refused to speak it (except when I was forced to) for about 2 years (my best friend did all my speaking for me). I started speaking English in Spain when I went for a summer full immersion Spanish program with a group of American kids. I guess my problem was my shyness and the fact that I didn’t need to speak…my friend was always there for me. I Spain I felt stronger because I knew both languages and the others depended on me.
Italian was really easy…having always studied Spanish grammar. Today I speak all three languages with no accent…people can’t tell where I’m from…and neither can I. I feel American when in Italy, Spanish when I’m in the US…etc..my problem NO TRUE ROOTS!!!!!
I was only 11 when I first went to England invited by an English couple. I spoke no English at all and my English family didn’t speak a word in Spanish. So I was forced to learn quickly to make myself understood. I went to school with the local children and in a few weeks I managed to follow a conversation and communicate with my schoolmates, with no fluency at all. After a year I had to return to Spain to catch up with my studies and kept going back to England during the summer holidays. I considered myself fluent in English when I managed to use the language straight away without having to translate what I wanted to say. It probably took me about two years of hard intensive work. The younger you are the better to have a good command of any language.