The necessary hours to get to B2

General discussion about learning languages
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Voytek
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Re: The necessary hours to get to B2

Postby Voytek » Wed Apr 26, 2017 5:57 pm

smallwhite wrote:
Voytek wrote:I just reached B2 in Swedish and I can say that it took me about 700 hours to get there:
- 100 hours to learn the pronunciation and prosody
- 200 hours with Anki creating a deck with 5000 words
- 100 hours to learn about 4000 words from it
- 100 hours for the Glossika course
- 25 hours learning from a basic Swedish course and the FSI one
- 125 hours of listening and reading (the TL/Polish).
- 50 hours of listening to the radio and reading articles also a bit of TV.

I love it when people give numbers :P

The hours look reasonable. Makes Swedish look very accessible. It's numbers like this that wake the evil that is wanderlust. "100 hours of pronunciation? I can handle that. 100 hours of SRS? I can live with that". And plop! I wander into yet another pool of quicksand :oops:

At least this time I'm safe 'cos I'm already in this pool of quicksand. I'm already studying Swedish and I have numbers for it as well. Got B2 in reading and listening in a recent mock test, but I can only say simple sentences (about Tom) at the moment.

111 hr Textbooks and grammar
088 hr Extensive reading
100 hr Vocab-mining and other vocab work, excluding SRS reps
068 hr LingQ for vocabulary and listening
021 hr TV
049 hr Speaking
016 hr Admin stuff
------------
453 hr
plus SRS reps maybe 80 hours and audio in the background sometimes
after good English and intermediate German
=======

This is not my typical study schedule, in case anyone was wondering.


I understand 95% from this video:
https://urskola.se/Produkter/195104-UR-Samtiden-Pulstraning-och-inlarning-Trana-for-din-hjarna

Now, I'm going to watch a lot of TV with subtitles since books which I'm interested in are still a bit too hard to me and I'll stick to the L-R method.
I recommend to you watching TV too. Here you can find videos from the Swedish TV (with subtitles):
http://www.dplay.se/kanal5/#!/play/program/226052/video/199366232|/program

https://www.svtplay.se/video/10958449/vetenskapsstudion/vetenskapsstudion-sasong-1-avsnitt-6

http://urplay.se/

Some videos are available only in Sweden but sill you can find plenty of them here.
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Exposure to Swedish-RL-building stage: 30 / 300
Exposure to Spanish-RL-final stage: 300 / 1500

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reineke
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Re: The necessary hours to get to B2

Postby reineke » Thu Jan 10, 2019 3:31 pm

"We know that learning a language takes a lot of effort over quite a long time. But how long should it take? Should I expect to be fluent after three years of study, for example? How many hours do I need to study a day to get fluent in a year?

There’s no single answer to this question – it depends very much on what your target is, what your motivation and opportunities are, and lots of other background factors.

But we’re often asked by educational institutions and ministries around the world to advise them on how much time students need to make progress in their English. We’ve summarised a lot of our research and advice in this paper."

"There is no single answer to the question ‘How long does it take to learn a language?’ However, we can
identify key parameters to look at in order to reach an answer that is meaningful in particular situations. If the
aspects of the learning environment and the learner can be evaluated as well as the definition of level and
type of skill needs to be acquired, then it becomes possible to make a reasonable estimate.

We give some examples of hours needed for different profiles of learner – for example, for adults, teenagers and primary-level children, and with different levels of motivation or ‘language distance’ from English. For motivated adult learners, they typically need between 100 and 200 hours of guided learning to get from one CEFR level to the next. As you go up the levels, you need more hours to get to the next one. To get from A1 to A2, it typically requires 100-150 hours of guided learning, but it can take 180-260 hours to get from B1 to B2.

When we talk about guided learning hours, we mean learning in a classroom or as part of a programme – i.e. including homework and other language learning activities which have been designed to improve your language skills. As your level increases, it becomes easier to make use of language learning opportunities outside the classroom – on-line communication or engaging with speakers of that language. So, you don’t necessarily need more classroom hours as you move up the CEFR scale.

Why do we have higher numbers of hours for primary school students? We know that young children in immersive contexts learn the language very quickly. ...


http://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2018/ ... -language/

The paper
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/wp-co ... nguage.pdf
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Tristano
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5141
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Re: The necessary hours to get to B2

Postby Tristano » Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:18 pm

I have my doubts about these numbers, nor I find them useful. I for instance can reach results much faster when studying alone than when instructed. I barely ever "study". I put myself in connection with the language and dedicate relaxing time with intensive/ extensive reading and if I keep it going long enough I can read and understand more than 80%. From there learning the other skills becomes easier. If I had to learn all the skills at the same moment it would take much longer. Many of us can reach results blazingly fast especially when studying languages related to one or more that are already in our arsenal.

Another thought. I hate intermediate course books with their global warming or bank related sort of topics. Is the amount of vocabulary or the relevance that makes someone b2?

In either case, I don't care and I think nobody should... am I an extremist?
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reineke
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Re: The necessary hours to get to B2

Postby reineke » Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:37 pm

Only if you go shirtless in your profile. Pimsleur and language learning podcasts don't quite cut it.
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