Learning a language an hour a day

I'm a bit disheartened that Korean is in group 4. T__T

The US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) divides languages into four tiers of difficulty for native English speakers to learn. Group 1, the easiest of the bunch, includes French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and Swahili. According to FSI research, it takes around 480 hours of practice to reach basic fluency in all Group 1 languages.

The difficulty begins to spike as we move down the list. It takes 720 hours to achieve the same level of fluency in Group 2 languages, which include Bulgarian, Burmese, Greek, Hindi, Persian and Urdu. More difficult are Amharic, Cambodian, Czech, Finnish and Hebrew, which places them in in Group 3. Group 4 is comprised of some of the most challenging languages for English speakers to grasp: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Full BBC article link

Yey!!! I just need 480 hours to get basic fluency in Spanish! Haha! Ajah! :wink:

So according to this if you spend around 90+ minutes every single day you'll be able to learn the languages from Group 1 in exactly 365 days - a year

Languages in group 2 would need a little more than 3 hours a day so you can learn them in a year 

Apparently, the languages that I want to learn are in Group 4. :sweat_smile:

Rai.S. wrote:

Apparently, the languages that I want to learn are in Group 4. :sweat_smile:

I feel you. I've always wanted to learn Korean and Japanese. Now I'm thinking maybe I should go back to learning Spanish or French.

Regarding the FSI scale that most of you are talking about, I made a previous post about it here. The OP article is spreading misinformation about it, so let me try to clear it up. 

it takes around 480 hours of practice to reach basic fluency in all Group 1 languages

No, this is wrong on several levels. 

1) The 480 hours represent classroom hours only. Their students spend about the same amount of time outside the classroom as in, so double that number.

2) FSI students are normally already highly accomplished language learners.

3) FSI doesn't use the term "basic fluency". The goal of their courses are what they call general professional proficiency, or S-3/R-3: Able to speak accurately and with enough vocabulary to handle social representation and professional discussions within special fields of knowledge; able to read most materials found in daily newspapers.  

At an hour a day's practice, a native English speaker could learn a Group 1 language in two years

This sentence means absolutely nothing, because they haven't defined what they mean by learn a language. What level is supposed to be reached? We are not told. For what it's worth, I think you'd most likely reach B1 or B2 at that point.

According to the FSI index, it would take 96 weeks at this pace to achieve basic fluency in a Group 1 language, or nearly two years. But by following the advice from experts, narrowing down your lessons for specific applications rather than general fluency, new speakers will be able to shave off significant time towards reaching their desired level.

The first sentence is wrong, as I showed above. But the second sentence is just as ridiculous; it's very unlikely self-studiers are going to learn faster than students in an FSI program, regardless of whose advice they take. FSI kicks ass.

^ Thanks for clarifying 

Damn, 2 whole years to learn languages in year 2?

I wonder what's the "average" age for learning.

Like I suppose younger people can learn it easier than old people? 

Thank you for the clarification, leosmith. I also think learning depends on the eagerness of the person, the available resources and the time and effort of the teacher. Learning all by yourself and without someone with you who knows the language can be really difficult.

So, ikaymoreno, we still have a chance with Korean. :)

Wow. It's great to hear that your daughter wants to learn another language. Spanish would be easier, I guess, because we got some of our words from the language.

Our students do three hours per week and most pass there exams within 2 school years but we offer an intensive 8 months at 3 hours per week which includes a tonne of homework

Rai.S. wrote:

Wow. It's great to hear that your daughter wants to learn another language. Spanish would be easier, I guess, because we got some of our words from the language.

She's also havign Filipino lessons and her Spanish lessons help make her enjoy the Filipino sessions more. :)

Is this a one-on-one lesson, ikay? Or is it an online session as well?

Rai.S. wrote:

Is this a one-on-one lesson, ikay? Or is it an online session as well?

Online. :) She's home-schooled so she does it after all her formal lessons. :)