Which is more efficient: a lit bit every day for a long period of time OR a lot in a shorter period of time?

[Cainntear]

Person B is only really feasible if it refers to someone who is put on an intensive language course for, say, 3 months on arrival in a new country as part of a job contract, leading to nearly full-time employment for the remaining 9 months of the year. In that case, I would put my money on B.

You certainly wouldn't be able to hold up that sort of pace doing self-directed learning, and you would need to have a pretty good teacher to be able to keep your focus for that much time a day.

[reineke]

5 hours per day, every summer, x 5 years.

I don't get to guess what you mean.

I'm of course with the option B.

What I mean is that you need some intensity and regularity. C1 levels appear more resistant to degradation. Not everyone can achieve this level in a Cat I language even after 1800 hours.

A tutoring scenario should get you to a B2 level but many people won't be able to break "the learning plateau" following this schedule. An intensive one-year mission might push you into C1 territory with some languages but after a five-year break your skills will certainly take a hit.

"Lesson 4. Time on task and the intensity of the learning experience appear crucial.

Learning a language also cannot be done in a short time...FSI has tried to shorten programs, and it has not worked...

Having made this investment, it is crucial to determine what can be done to maintain the language skills that the graduates have achieved or, preferably, to improve them. Language maintenance at post may not simply be a matter of giving the speakers a set of strategies to use there, but more one of attaining a “critical mass” of language proficiency. Informally, we have observed in the languages that we have worked with that an individual departing for post following training with a borderline professional proficiency (or lower) is very likely to experience attrition. An individual with a strong professional proficiency (S-3 or S-3) will maintain or improve proficiency, and with advanced professional proficiency (S3 or S-4) will almost certainly continue to improve. "

Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching

"This work analyzed 13 years of Defense Language Institute (DLI data) from over 16,000 military linguists to determine if cognitive-based skill retention theory can adequately explain foreign language change. Relationships between independent variables suggested by skill retention theory and second language change were investigated. Language proficiency and the length of time since DLI graduation demonstrated strong correlations with foreign language change...

...there is a 25 percent probability that level 2 linguists will fall to 1+ during the first year. This probability decreases to roughly 10 percent for level 2+ linguists and 5 percent for level 3 linguists...

Near the end of the survival analysis timeline, roughly a 10-year period, the probability of an event has risen to 90 percent for level 2 linguists, 70 percent for level 2+ linguists, and 50 percent for level 3 linguists."

Modeling second language change using skill retention theory
Shearer, Samuel

ILR 3+ = Firm C1
ILR 3 = B2+/C1
ILR 2/2+ = B2/B2+

[StringerBell]

The question really is: what are these hours made up of? What are you doing during these hours?

Whatever person A is doing, person B is doing the same thing.

For this sake of this hypothetical situation, let's say it's some mix of intensive and extensive reading, watching TV, listening to podcasts, some practice with a grammar course book, some conversation practice with a LEP, etc...

Person B is only really feasible if it refers to someone who is put on an intensive language course for, say, 3 months on arrival in a new country as part of a job contract, leading to nearly full-time employment for the remaining 9 months of the year. In that case, I would put my money on B.

You certainly wouldn't be able to hold up that sort of pace doing self-directed learning, and you would need to have a pretty good teacher to be able to keep your focus for that much time a day.

Other people also seem to think that 5 hours per day is unrealistic, but if a person is motivated, I think it's very realistic. I'm a self-directed learner and in 2018, I averaged 3 hours/day for the year with Polish (1100 hours) and 2-3 hours a day with Italian. Probably 2-3 of those 5-6 hours were taking advantage of dead time, like listening to podcasts while driving or washing dishes, etc... I had no problem spending 5-6 hours a day being in contact with either Italian or Polish. So I believe it absolutely is feasible.

Regardless of the feasibility or practicality, I'm just wondering if there is a difference in the result one would achieve, assuming that both scenarios could be accomplished.

[reineke]

Take all this with a grain of salt.

"We forget as much as 60 % of what we have attempted to commit to memory after 20 mins and 80 % after a week without rehearsal of the same material. Hence spaced out practice is key! BUT WHAT IS THE OPTIMAL SPACE INTERVAL? (from a thread in Global Innovative Language Teachers)."

G Conti via Twitter

spacing out.jpg

[Chupito]

At the end of those 1825 hours, do you think person A and B would be at the same place, skill wise, with their foreign languages, or would one of them have an advantage over the other one?

I'm not sure. I think there's something to be said for both. Perhaps a person C alternating both methods or starting out as A and switching to B later on would get better results than A and B.

It also raises other questions: are we measuring after 5 years or after they complete their hours? is the time spent consecutively? If so, I would vote A for sure because it's difficult to maintain full attention over 5 hours straight. I agree with Tarvos that you have to ask what they are doing and I don't think that your answer that they are doing the same thing is a realistic one. Surely, you would plan your study differently if you were doing A than if you were doing B. If you impose the same method to both, this could advantage one over the other. For instance, A might start each study session by a quick review of what they did the day before but it wouldn't be the same for B to start each hour to quickly review what they have just finished doing mere seconds before.

This is just my opinion, but I think person B will have the advantage. The reason I say this is because people forget stuff. I can't find any studies (reineke ??) but I remember hearing about them. People forget something like 50% of what they learned the day after they learned it. If this is the case then person A would remember 30 minutes of stuff and person B would remember 2.5 hours of stuff. So person B is gaining a 2 hour advantage each day. So I'm thinking that person B is getting 5 times more retention and improvement that person A.

Just my theory.

I don't necessarily disagree that person B has an advantage, but like Serpent said, I doubt it's linear. Taking an extreme example: you can give me a list of 2 words with X time to learn them and I will remember both (100%) tomorrow but if you give me a list of 1,000 words to learn in 500X today, I probably won't even remember 200 tomorrow (20%).

Besides, I'm not even convinced person B is gaining a 2 hour advantage each day in your scenario: A knows 2 hours less of stuff on day 2 but they have spent 4 less hours studying by that point. How do you see that advantage occuring?

[Teango]

Just to add a further quote from Shearer's conclusion (see reineke's original post above):

Using the results from the DTRA and advanced linguists, we propose that linguists must attain a proficiency level of a high 2+ to 3 in listening and reading and a speaking proficiency of 2 to 2+ in order to maintain proficiency as long as possible.

So depending on how you like to align ILR and CEFR proficiency scales, it sounds like a C1 level in receptive skills and B2 in productive skills is a pretty decent goal to aim for.

Note: "DTRA" refers to linguists selected for a Defense Threat Reduction Agency assignment who had "taken the DLPT within the last year and achieved a level 2 in listening and reading", while "advanced" linguists refers to intermediate students who had "taken the DLPT within the last year and achieved a level 2+ in listening and one other skill" (op. cit., p. 31).

[Random Review]

Surely it depends on any number of factors, such as difficulty, interest, method, motivation, etc. I don't think you can collapse it down to a black and white choice.

IMO the person who succeeds best is the person who uses both strategies flexibly as and when required or the opportunity arises.
That's not an option in the poll, though.

[白田龍]

I think at beginner levels it is a lot better to do it like person B, but as you advance, the advantage diminishes.

Person A would eventually catch up and they would learn about the same.

Voted B because I feel that doing things intensively is crucial at the beginning levels.

[Serpent]

Other people also seem to think that 5 hours per day is unrealistic, but if a person is motivated, I think it's very realistic. I'm a self-directed learner and in 2018, I averaged 3 hours/day for the year with Polish (1100 hours) and 2-3 hours a day with Italian. Probably 2-3 of those 5-6 hours were taking advantage of dead time, like listening to podcasts while driving or washing dishes, etc...

There's a huge difference between spending 5 hours on two intermediate (or "fluent") languages vs one beginner language. For most beginners it will be way past the point of diminishing returns.
Essentially we're not comparing years. We're comparing the usefulness of 5 hours in 5 days vs 5 hours in one day. Of course it's great to have 5-hour sessions every now and then, but not all of them will be equally effective.

BTW, when I began learning Finnish seriously, I used a textbook with 20 units. I think I got through about 11-12 of them during the summer (when I studied 4-8 hours a day). The only unit I could do in one day was the first one where you learn the pronunciation etc. The rest took me 3-4 days, and later more. Of course I did other things too, like listening to music. When the school year began, I had to slow down obviously. I finished the textbook during my winter holidays I think, and I still didn't know all the vocabulary from the word lists. (some words were only mentioned once in a text or dialogue)

The only situation in which 5 hours are preferrable is if both do LR. (but honestly I wouldn't be able to do LR every day for a year)

I have could prove, over the years, that foreign people living in Spain (friends of mine, from Czech Republic (2) and from france(1)), working, using and studying spanish from knowing nothing have learnt to talking so fluently (minimum C1 level) in only one year. Specially, I can remember as my french friend was barely able to talk almost nothing, however, in only one year he was able to talk about everything and in two years he became totally bilingual.

Did they actually study for 5 hours per day? How much exposure did they get? I obviously agree that it's possible to learn a lot if you live in a country where your language is spoken, but if you count all exposure, that's more than 5 hours per day, and if you count only serious learning I think it's uncommon to do that much. And again if you're a beginner you're going to waste some time initially when you understand next to nothing.

[javier_getafe]

I have could prove, over the years, that foreign people living in Spain (friends of mine, from Czech Republic (2) and from france(1)), working, using and studying spanish from knowing nothing have learnt to talking so fluently (minimum C1 level) in only one year. Specially, I can remember as my french friend was barely able to talk almost nothing, however, in only one year he was able to talk about everything and in two years he became totally bilingual.

Did they actually study for 5 hours per day? How much exposure did they get? I obviously agree that it's possible to learn a lot if you live in a country where your language is spoken, but if you count all exposure, that's more than 5 hours per day, and if you count only serious learning I think it's uncommon to do that much. And again if you're a beginner you're going to waste some time initially when you understand next to nothing.

Hi Serpent, hi everyone,

But, I think that everyone is taking into account only studying for 5 hours per day although the initicial question was the next below:

For example (ignoring leap year):
person A spends 1 hour per day (every day) for 5 years studying/using/practicing a foreign language for a total of 1825 hours.
person B spends 5 hours per day (every day) for 1 year studying/using/practicing a foreign language for a total of 1825 hours.

That is, I was taking into account that the person A and person B is not only studying but also using and practising the language in question.

Regarding my friend, perhaps you are certainly right because my french friend spent the 100% of the weekends hanging out with us and his exposure was more than 5 hours per day. In fact, he was alone in Spain so he had not much to do but staying with us listening us the whole day talking so fast and using slang. Moreover, he was taking a intensive spanish course in his job, so a lots of hours per day. Now, he is completely bilingual, even he knows more slang than me