Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

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GandwolfTheGrey
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Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

Postby GandwolfTheGrey » Mon Jul 19, 2021 4:54 pm

Hello all,

I posted something quite like this many years ago on the HTAL forum, and since then I've revised my ideas and wanted to share it with you all. There seems to be many people, myself included, who want some kind of measureable idea about how many words and how much time is likely needed to reach a specified level (according to CEFR scale) in a language. Well, here's my attempt to answer that question. Keep in mind, I've only studied Indo-European languages and so can only assume that this scale applies to that family and more distant languages from these likely require significantly more time. Also very important, the "how many months" question assumes effective, dedicated studying for a minimum of 2 hours per day, every single day for the given time frame. Obviously, failing to meet that target will result in slower progress. The word count also assumes higher frequency words, eg. knowing 500 words about botany alone isn't going to meet A1 criteria. Alright without further ado, here's my two cents.

Words known per level:

A1 - 500
A2 - 1000
B1 - 2000
B2 - 4000
C1 - 8000
C2 - 16000

Time needed per level:

A1 - 1 month
A2 - 2 months
B1 - 4 months
B2 - 8 months
C1 - 16 months
C2 - 32 months

As you can see, each level for both categories doubles the previous total. I don't have a scientific basis for this at all so it's based purely on my own experience and the experiences I've heard from other learners. Nonetheless, hopefully it gives the obsessive among us something to aim for.
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Re: Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

Postby elka » Tue Jul 20, 2021 3:50 am

I completely get the need to establish these numbers because you can say to yourself “If I’m going to study for 16 months and also learn 8000 words, I am going to be on a C1 level!” Unfortunately that is not how it works.
The general number of words you know is less important than the number of words you can use actively. If you can use one word in many contexts I would argue that you need to know less words than you have estimated here. On the other hand, if you have learned 8000 words purely from Anki (which I am not a fan of), you might not be able to fully comprehend a text on the C1 level, let alone produce sentences on a C1 level.

As for the time estimate (hope you don’t mind me being an example) - it took me about 24 years to be somewhere between C1 and C2. Obviously, I was 5 years old back than and I would have learned the language faster should I had started learning as an adult. It is hard to estimate how many hours I have spent with English (be it studying, listening to something or reading something) but my guess is that it is well over 10 000 hours. In fact, in the last 10 years, I have spent at least 3 hours of listening to podcasts and such almost every day and I am not even including the hours during which I read articles etc. Another thing is that I did everything in English - I set all my devices to English, I googled everything in English, I cooked according to recipes in English and so on. I was always confounded by the hour estimates I saw on the Cambridge English website about how many hours you have to study in order to achieve said level. If it is at all possible I suppose it is meant as guided hours with a teacher plus self-study hours on top of that (just like the FSI courses).

So if I was to guesstimate the number of hours it takes to reach a level B2 and beyond I’d say you need 10 000 hours (for C2) spread out across years. The 32 months for C2 is way too little.

The internet agrees with me:
https://www.quora.com/How-many-years-did-it-take-you-to-reach-C2-level-of-fluency-in-another-language-without-conversing-with-native-speakers-living-in-another-country
https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/djpnia/how_long_does_it_take_for_someone_to_reach_c2/

I have also obviously found quite a few blog articles saying that it takes like 1200 hours to reach C2 but those are more like motivational articles that want you to read as much of their articles as possible and are often trying to sell you something.

I am by no means trying to scare you or derail you from learning a foreign language and achieving a high level but language learning is a life-long commitment - reaching B2+ is one thing but keeping said language active is a matter of daily practice so you don’t fall to a lower level.
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Re: Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

Postby GandwolfTheGrey » Tue Jul 20, 2021 12:46 pm

A well thought out reply Elka, and it does make sense. I just want to reiterate that the calculation more or less mere conjecture. Perhaps I just don't fully understand what abilities one actually has at each level of the scale. And yes, I definitely agree that passive fluency is one thing and that active takes a lot more effort. That said, for anyone else reading this, I also want to reiterate that my assumptions entail serious effort which includes activating vocabulary. With that in mind, I'd probably another 50% to the time scales.
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Re: Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

Postby Iversen » Tue Jul 20, 2021 1:47 pm

As far as I can see the central claim in the opening message in this thread is that both words AND months needed to reach a higher level grow exponentially. I don’t really believe in any of these claims, even though it is clear that you need more words and probably also more time to get to a higher level.

As for the time factor the main objection is that you can’t possible know what the average time is when you don’t know how that time is spent. Maybe there are some that get through their learning fast, either because they use good methods, live in a fortunate place or just are smart guys, and you may make some assumptions about the minimum time for normal learners – but you can’t say that it takes a certain number of months if that time includes long breaks and time squandered on irrelevant activities.

As for the number of words (or headwords, which is my preferred yardstick): I only feel really comfortable in those languages where my word counts have exceeded 20.000 headwords, though I can survive with less. But 500 … well, to really read a text as a continuous fabric of words, albeit with some holes in it, that doesn’t suffice. The 500 should include the most important ‘function words’, but then you also need to know how to use them in a grammatical context. You can however communicate on a journey with just 500 words if they are chosen well, although the people with whom you communicate will see you as a poor helpless tourist speaking some kind of Tarzanese. Reading a book or even a newspaper with 500 words – nope. At most you can get the ‘gist’ by some clever guesswork, but guessing is not understanding.
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Re: Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

Postby Deinonysus » Tue Jul 20, 2021 2:02 pm

I got a bit of déjà-vu reading this thread, so I did a search and found this one with a similar premise of calculating how long it will take to reach a giving level in a language given a starting vocabulary of 500 words at A1 and doubling every subsequent level:
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=16463
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Re: Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

Postby einzelne » Tue Jul 20, 2021 8:18 pm

In approaching vocabulary, I think it is important to keep in mind the following:

1) You don't need all words to be in your active vocabulary. Learning to recognize words passively is certainly easier in you can make much quicker progress in expanding you passive vocabulary.
2) While learning a language is a never-ending process, it is good to have certain milestones. They help you to assess your progress, which once you reached the intermedia level becomes less and less perceptible.

I think a diligent and highly motivated student can easily reach the level of 98-99% known words in a random text in 32 months. After that you hit the wall: 99% comprehension is like a magic number. It will take years and years before you can reach 99,5% comprehension in any random text (not to mention the additional task of mastering and polishing active skills). This is not to discourage language enthusiasts but rather to provide a more or less realistic picture. Some of us are ready to run an IronMan, while others will be satisfied with a marathon or a 10k distance. (I, for instance, am ready to work hard on my vocabulary in English and French, while in German I limit myself to the vocabulary for non-fiction books on specific topics I'm interested in).
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Re: Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

Postby smallwhite » Tue Jul 20, 2021 10:36 pm

Deinonysus wrote:I got a bit of déjà-vu reading this thread, so ...

I got déjà-déjà-vu
How long does it take? Answered!
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Re: Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

Postby elka » Thu Jul 22, 2021 6:49 am

GandwolfTheGrey wrote:A well thought out reply Elka, and it does make sense. I just want to reiterate that the calculation more or less mere conjecture. Perhaps I just don't fully understand what abilities one actually has at each level of the scale. And yes, I definitely agree that passive fluency is one thing and that active takes a lot more effort. That said, for anyone else reading this, I also want to reiterate that my assumptions entail serious effort which includes activating vocabulary. With that in mind, I'd probably another 50% to the time scales.


I get what you are saying :) It is true that “passive fluency” takes a lot more time. I guess one could quite possibly reach some form of fluency in 32 months. Definitely not active fluency or even a native level of the language. Which reminds me of one thread I read a couple of years back in which many people who reached native-like fluency agreed that there is a level beyond C2 that is the true native-like fluency and that C2 is the highest level that can be obtained by studying whereas the higher level of native-like fluency takes a really long time of using the language daily and maybe is even not possible for someone to learn should they not have began studying when they were very young. The amount of hours you spend studying per day is obviously also very important. It is also true that I am a slow learner and I didn’t make much effort to learn English faster. Funnily enough, I had to look up the word “conjecture” because I wasn’t able to figure it out from the context so even after all this time, I don’t comprehend “everything”. One more thing is that it is very hard to define fluency and two people who are fluent in a language can have varying degrees of different abilities. This post is a bit all over the place but my main point is that I agree with you that passive fluency can take 32 months, or more like 32-40 months but the time it takes to achieve active fluency of the language can’t be properly measured in time and sadly might never come.
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Re: Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

Postby Le Baron » Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:20 pm

There is a disclaimer in the title 'probably' which I acknowledge. I'm not just sceptical regarding proposed 'scientifically prepared' rapid timescales for language success; I don't believe them at all. It's pretty ludicrous to posit scientific credibility for something which, regarding its final subject matter: people in society with a huge diversity of variables - can't be properly controlled for. A problem the social 'sciences' knows all-too-well. Riddled with biases of all kinds and wishful thinking.

It's not entirely hopeless because there has been plenty of research and improvement in techniques for language learning, but the simple fact is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. If there was a foolproof superfast method everyone in the know would be doing it right now and coming out the other end proficient in some given level. It almost never happens, if ever. Elka's two posts describe the reality of language learning to proficiency. That real proficiency is slower and needs persistent usage day-in-day out to become part of the fabric of your being.

We have to remember that success stories only tell us who succeeded, not who didn't. And that goes for courses claiming methodological success: the people on them are selected or self-selected because they have demonstrated ability to handle the course.
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Re: Here's how many words and how much time you need (probably)

Postby luke » Mon Jul 26, 2021 4:07 pm

GandwolfTheGrey wrote:Words known per level:

A1 - 500
C2 - 16000

Time needed per level:

A1 - 1 month
C2 - 32 months

There is also the assumption that someone can learn 500 words a month and keep that pace going for almost 3 years. Those with Anki vocab experience know this projection may be optimistic and unrealistic.
Le Baron wrote:There is a disclaimer in the title 'probably' which I acknowledge.

Although it sort of defies the definition, probably in the topic title must mean extremely low values of probably. ;)
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