Opportunity Cost of FSI Category V languages

[IronMike]

But isn't this more "time-on-task" than total time? For example it took you 5 years, but did you study 8 hours a day? Would German have taken you 5 years if you studied it for 8 hours a day 365 days a year? You might get to C1 Chinese in 2 years if you put enough time into it?

That's a fair point. I guess I just can't imagine spending more time on Chinese than I did on German so it's not likely that I could learn it any faster. Perhaps if I lived in China it would make a difference...

Can you really get to C1 Mandarin in two years? Just curious...

Some kids in DLI get to C1 in Reading, Listening and Speaking in 88 weeks of full-time training, so it is possible.

[Beli Tsar]

Anyway the FSI categories did make a difference for me. I'm in my early 50s. It took me about five years to get to about a C1 level in German. I'd love to learn Mandarin or perhaps Japanese, but thought that it might be in my early 70s before I am a comfortable C1 is off-putting. So I went with Spanish. If I thought I could learn Mandarin to a decent level in 10 years I would be willing to reconsider things.

I'd be interested to know what the more experienced learners think about the degree to which acquiring your third language is faster than your second. I realise it's been addressed in other topics, but how does it impact on this one?

Certainly for someone like me, whose school education didn't touch on grammar in any language, it feels like half the battle of my first language isn't there any more. I don't have to sit battling with a textbook for hours wondering what on earth it all means.

And then there's simply the skills of learning, the confidence, the understanding of how to face a text you can't read that well yet, and so on...

Obviously when the language in question is Mandarin, though, a lot of the knowledge from say, German, isn't particularly helpful...

[patrickwilken]

Can you really get to C1 Mandarin in two years? Just curious...

Some kids in DLI get to C1 in Reading, Listening and Speaking in 88 weeks of full-time training, so it is possible.

Wow. Now I feel bad for not putting in more effort. Perhaps in a few years I'll give it a try.

I'd be interested to know what the more experienced learners think about the degree to which acquiring your third language is faster than your second. I realise it's been addressed in other topics, but how does it impact on this one?

Some things are obviously going to be easier, especially if you self-taught the first time, so you know what works for you the second time (what are good courses, whether and how something like Anki can be effective, time management strategies etc etc). However, in the end you have to learn a ton of vocab and grammar, and I am not sure your L2 is going to speed this up unless your L3 is a related language.

[smallwhite]

I'd be interested to know what the more experienced learners think about the degree to which acquiring your third language is faster than your second. I realise it's been addressed in other topics, but how does it impact on this one?

Thread: How much easier is L3 compared to L2?
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =14&t=1329

[fcoulter]

I'm not sure it matters for the conversation, but they've apparently dropped the number of language categories down to four.

https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/sls/c78549.htm

[reineke]

I'm not sure it matters for the conversation, but they've apparently dropped the number of language categories down to four.

https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/sls/c78549.htm

German causing trouble in its own group.

Paul Pimsleur refers to 4 FSI categories and the current FSI scale also includes 4 categories. Compared to the five category scale, German and French each got 4 extra weeks of study time.

Not sure if FSI targets ILR 3 only for consular officers.

Other considerations.

The Defense Language Institute categorizes languages into four levels of difficulty.

"Category I languages, 26-week courses, include Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.
Category II, 35 weeks, includes German and Indonesian
Category III, 48 weeks, includes Dari, Persian Farsi, Russian, Uzbek, Hindi, Urdu, Hebrew, Thai, Serbian Croatian, Tagalog, Turkish, Sorani and Kurmanji
Category IV, 64 weeks, includes Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, Korean, Japanese and Pashto
“The expectation is that after 26 weeks in Spanish, you’re going to end up at the same graduation rate as someone who’s here for 64 weeks” studying a Category IV language, said Clare A. Bugary, deputy chief of staff for operations.

She said 91 percent of students at DLI are taking either a Category III or IV language.

DLI also assesses students using the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale, which bases language proficiency on a scale of 0-5. While Level 5 means someone has a complete fluency of the language, DLI focuses mainly on getting students around Level 2 in overall proficiency.

“Level two to three is typically where our language professionals are,” Bugary said. Common, everyday conversations – even in English – are usually around Level 2..."


https://www.ausa.org/articles/dlis-language-guidelines

FSI vs DLI
At DLI CAT I requires 2 extra weeks, however the target number of class hours for CAT IV languages was cut by one third (24 weeks). Cat III (Russian and co) requires 4 extra weeks compared to FSI. The target is ILR 2.

Another way of looking at it:
The Japanese NAT test targets 1000 study hours to reach the equivalent of JLPT N1. The test doesn't include speaking.

According to my estimates based on some online sources, you can come up with around 1400 hours for HSK 5 (Mandarin). HSK does test speaking. Roughly. Target audience: full time students.

[patrickwilken]

The Defense Language Institute categorizes languages into four levels of difficulty.

"Category I languages, 26-week courses, include Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.
Category II, 35 weeks, includes German and Indonesian
Category III, 48 weeks, includes Dari, Persian Farsi, Russian, Uzbek, Hindi, Urdu, Hebrew, Thai, Serbian Croatian, Tagalog, Turkish, Sorani and Kurmanji
Category IV, 64 weeks, includes Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, Korean, Japanese and Pashto
“The expectation is that after 26 weeks in Spanish, you’re going to end up at the same graduation rate as someone who’s here for 64 weeks” studying a Category IV language, said Clare A. Bugary, deputy chief of staff for operations.

Does that mean I could expect to get to an equivalent level of Mandarin proficiency in less than twice the time it took me to learn German? That sounds too good to be true.

[Axon]

Does that mean I could expect to get to an equivalent level of Mandarin proficiency in less than twice the time it took me to learn German? That sounds too good to be true.

Remember at the DLI they study full-time with excellent teachers. Still, I think "less than twice the time" is a very achievable goal.

Your biggest problem with Mandarin is vocabulary, as you get about thirty or forty loanwords in the whole lexicon of everyday speech. Grammar is a cinch if you know German and English and are okay with ambiguity.

I started Mandarin after two years of German courses. I've only done monolingual travels and university courses in German, never lived in a German-speaking area or chatted with Germans regularly. On the other hand I've lived in China on and off and spoken Chinese casually every day for the last two years. I'd guess I have something like 1300 hours of "total German time" (whatever that means) and more than 1800 of "total Mandarin time."

So although I have two years head start with German, my daily Mandarin speaking fluency is far better than the equivalent areas of language in German. Conversely, my listening and reading in German is quite advanced, to a point that I think it would take at least another year of dedicated Mandarin study to reach that point.

I say go for it - Mandarin is not some special monster. It's just another language.

[reineke]

During my interview with a US consular officer in a Cat III language I was constantly leaning over to be as close as possible to the booth. My ears wanted to suction cup the glass. He had to repeat and rephrase himself so many times that he switched to English. You can do that too in under $40K/1000 hours.

[patrickwilken]

I say go for it - Mandarin is not some special monster. It's just another language.

You sound like me when I talk to my daughter about the monsters under the bed. Mandarin is a scary language!!

Given this I am not sure if I would go for Japanese or Chinese. I need to think about it. In any case I need to get much better in Spanish first, perhaps in a 1-2 years I'll take up another language. This language thing is infectious.