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

[Serpent]

Yeah I meant in the best case scenario

[Serpent]

Also I use huge intervals ( I hate the default settings) and a step of 2400 otherwise I could not continue using anki since the review counts quickly become burdensome with the default settings.

Good point about SRS, they won't be able to use it the same way. No matter what they do it's going to be more efficient for one than the other.

[Random Review]

If the learners are your average Michel Thomas/Pimsleur customers, they'll get nowhere fast on accelerated schedule while the result of a long-term commitment might sound something like: I studied French/German/Chinese for five years but...

They tend to do 1-3 hours a week, not 1 hour every single day. And if they take a break they go back to lesson one to ensure they don't forget anything

I have used and like both programs (though neither is perfect) and your figures are roughly accurate for Pimsleur (3.5 hours per week). Depending on how busy your life is, this can either be a bug or a feature of the course. With FIGS and Portuguese, you definitely don't have to go back to lesson 1 if you take a break; with other languages, admittedly you might. With Chinese, I couldn't use the course as designed and actually spent more time with it.

For Michel Thomas, anyone using it like that isn't using it right. The 2 main levels total 13 hours and ideally you can and should complete that in a single weekend. I certainly did for 3 languages (sadly there isn't one for Chinese), because I was enjoying it so much, I didn't want to put it down. The somewhat similar Language Transfer courses require a little more repetition in my experience, but certainly not to the extent of going back to lesson 1 after a break.

My Spanish study was like a mixture of both options (although very rarely so much as 5 hours a day) and periods of no study all mixed up like a big salad over something like a decade, due to certain constraints (mainly work, competition with German and difficulty in finding time where no one could hear me*). I am still fairly happy with how my Spanish study went; however James29 started later than me and went on to surpass me with something pretty damn close to option 1, so there seems to be something to be said for it where it is possible.

My German study was close to option 1 for maybe 1 or 2 years (coinciding with the easiest pot-washing job I ever had), but has been on the back burner for 4 years due to living in Spain and then China. I still listen to audiobooks and watch YouTube videos occasionally, but very, very little active study for 4 years (and none at all for 2 years).

My Chinese method was close to option 1 for 21 months (so I don't know where 5 years would take me); but there have been option 2-like periods such as during Spring Festival both years (other people travelled) and also recently due to visa delays for my next job. I felt a jump in my comprehension in this last period (of around 2-3 hours study a day between anki reps and just chilling, watching cartoons), probably due to lots of CI in Chinese (something, annoyingly, I could not find much of in China at all- to anyone reading this who wants to learn Mandarin Chinese, don't go to China without a VPN. I'm serious, don't do it).


* Even in Spain and China, where you'd think it would be acceptable to be caught studying the local language, I was still embarrassed by the idea (even all these years later, UK public schools have left me with the gut feeling that studying is something shameful, to be hidden unless there is a clear cash goal in mind).

[EricUSA]

Hello everyone, I'm a new member here and I love to learn languages.
Alas, my workload doesn't make it possible for me anymore to learn new languages in an intensive way.

MY ANSWER:
I'm leaning toward B -- but there is much variation from learner to learner. I doubt that it is possible to give a generally valid answer whether A or B is better. Learning approach, individual aptitude, and motivation are as important (if not more!) as the daily amount of learning time and total learning time.

Moreover, some people learn in "waves" -- periods of high motivation, high intensity, and high learning efficiency over months or a year, followed by a long break of no learning over months or more, and followed by a new period of renewed motivation and intense learning. Such a learning approach can also be effective.

In my case, I often learn two languages at a time, one of which enjoys my higher attention over a period of 6-12 months. When my motivation runs out of steam for that language, I increase my learning of the other language. When my motivation declines for that language also, I resume learning the first language with high motivation and energy. This approach has helped me to harness my motivational ups and downs in a more efficient way.

[Inst]

Long duration is superior based on how memories work; i.e, the longer you learn and relearn things, the better the material is consolidated. On the other hand, there may be limited fields where "a shorter period of time" may be superior. For instance, attempting to bootstrap pronunciation, orthography, or basic grammar. People are best off with a well-qualified instructor who is sufficiently oriented to catch and fix the mistakes of the learner, but this sort of time is expensive. So you might be better off bootstrapping with an instructor, then continuing your learning on your own once the biggest minefields are handled.

[Finny]

I'm sure this has been discussed here, but I couldn't find any threads about it; maybe I wasn't searching the right key words.

Do you think it's more effective to spend more hours per day learning a foreign language vs. spending less time per day but over a longer period of time, assuming the total practice/exposure is the same?

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.

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 in team B, but that's because I'm a born and bred AJATTer. I spent more than a decade toddling along with Spanish and French and didn't get past being able to read in them. It only took a year of spending multiple hours a day listening to and reading in Spanish to get to the point where I felt comfortable enough using it as my only language with my daughter when she was born, as well as comfy enough to pass a foreign language test and become a schoolteacher in the language. Ditto with French; after a year of really focused work on it (because I didn't want to teach my kids more bad grammar than necessary), I got comfortable enough with it to be able to stop worrying about teaching my kids nonsense when we speak it. So yes, for me at least, putting in a lot of concentrated time to get results tops a slow and steady approach, simply because I don't seem to take things seriously unless I make them a large part of my day.

[leosmith]

A. I think 5 years on task trumps the advantages of firing on all pistons for a year. Personally, I wouldn't be able to do just 1 hr per day - it would drive me nuts. I'm surprised at how many people think 5 hrs/day for a year is impossible.

[romeo.alpha]

I'd go with option A.

My experience with French after 8 years of school French, and moving to a French speaking city was that my brain would shut off after about 2 hours. At that point I just couldn't understand any French I heard. I had a similar limit in the beginning to time spent studying. Even if it was something fairly low effort like watching French in Action, after 2 hours I just couldn't keep up with it.

With languages I was just starting out with, like Japanese, I had to really work to stick through 30 minutes.

So for an absolute beginner, I think even 1 hour a day to start is unrealistic, to say nothing of 5 hours a day. So we're comparing two options with varying degrees of over-optimism.

Also, an experience I made in studying Mandarin in university, going through an intensive program (3 hours a day, 5 days a week), with unit exams every 2 weeks, was that I'd usually understand the material for the last exam by the time the next one rolled around. While this wasn't a huge problem in terms of learning, I was still internalizing the material I'd studied before while working on the next topic, it made it very difficult to get a passing grade. I managed to finish first year, but with a slight increase in difficulty in second year I had to drop out. My experience says in a university context, the less intensive option is definitely better, simply due to the better viability in maintaining a passing grade.

That also brings up another point, for some things it doesn't matter how much time you spend studying it, just the amount of time that has passed since you first learned it. In the intensive option (even if we're not comparing 1 hour to 5 hours), a lot of the time you're putting in is wasted effort. It might be something like you have close to 100% efficiency for the first 15 minutes, and someone spending 15 minutes a day will have much better results than someone spending 3 minutes a day, but you're going to have a drop off in retention relative to the time spent as you add more in, and eventually there will be a hard wall where you're not learning anything, and probably even doing damage to what you've learned.

It will also change over time. A beginner will definitely get far better results with 1 hour a day than 5 hours a day. But once you're actually competent at speaking the language and can function in a work environment where that language is spoken, 5 hours of well-structured practice would pay off quite well.

So the optimal study plan would start out with less time invested than option A, while gradually morphing into B.