I was planning to wait until the one month mark to give an update, but I hit some big milestones today and wanted to share.
I have officially logged 50 hours of intensive study! This represents 1% completion of my long-term goal to study 5000 hours. When I say intensive study, I really mean time spent on the HelloChinese app, which can be easily tracked by Apple's screen time monitoring. I've decided not to track time watching videos or reading b/logs for several reasons. These activities are hard to accurately track and frankly I fear timing them would take away my enjoyment and sense of relaxation. Coincidentally, I've also reached a word exposure milestone of 500 words, meaning an exposure rate of 10 words/hour.
Why the 5000 hour goal?After a lot of research, my understanding is that the expected time to mastery (i.e. HSK6 and beyond) will take around 5,000 hours. The Foreign Service Institute categorizes Mandarin as a Class IV, an "exceptionally difficult" language for native English learners, and estimates >2200 hours of class time needed before reaching "professional working proficiency". I believe this is equivalent to HSK5-6? Whatever is meant by
professional working proficiency, that I think is my
true goal ("Mastering" mandarin may be too ambitious *gulp*). I figure it will take 2500-5000 hours to reach a place that I am satisfied with my level of proficiency, perhaps a middle of 3750 hours. Other estimates of time needed to achieve HSK1-5 also exist and they scale exponentially (see below). I'd like to reach this level in two years, by which time I will be ready to take a new job that requires the Mandarin language in some capacity.
How many hours/day will I need to study to reach proficiency in two years?I made a table in excel that inputs time studying per day, and outputs the time in days required to reach each level. Green represents acceptable time to completion (<2 years), yellow is less desirable (2-5 years), and want to avoid red (>5 years).
Time table for learning mandarin.png
This is why visuals are important, it screams:
PROFESSIONAL PROFICIENCY IS GOING TO TAKE SIX HOURS OF STUDY EACH DAY FOR TWO YEARS! Ouch.
So, I need to be reminding myself that there are many fun milestones along the way. You can see I listed what each HSK level 'opens up' in terms of new experiences:
HSK1 - Babble
HSK2 - Self-narrate
HSK3 - Talk with co-workers
HSK4 - Meaningful language exchanges
HSK5 - Passive learning books and audio
HSK6 - Professional use
For example, if I push myself and study three hours a day, I could be talking to my co-workers in five months! That seems more manageable and is just as motivating as my long term goal. Similarly, I can say I am just as excited to start having meaningful language exchanges and reading stimulating materials, which makes each milestone of HSK3-6 very meaningful to me. It's HSK0-2 which "gives me" less, but these levels have other motivators like making rapid progress and beginner's enthusiasm.
What's my plan?Front load time spent studying, aiming for 3-4 hours a day until I reach HSK3 and can start talking with colleagues. Right now I'm averaging just over two hours study per day: 1.5-2 hours before work, 0.25 hours on commute to work. Some options to increase this are studying during lunch (0.5), commute home (0.25), during exercise (0.5), and evenings at home (however by night I am exhausted and wanting to relax and spend time with my significant other). Weekends I can easily hit 4 hours, assuming I'm not with family or taking trips with my SO. Once talking to my co-workers at HSK3, I might cool down to 1-2 hours a day and reassess my progress then.
edits: LOTS of edits.