Comment on We all took foreign languages in school and none of us can actually speak those languages
Get_Off_My_WLAN@fedia.io 3 days ago
Most people don't really understand how many total hours of purposeful learning and actual usage is needed to become proficient.
For Japanese, it typically takes people who can't already read 漢字 about 1,325 hours to reach N3 (conversational), and 2,200 for N2 (roughly business). That means if you want to get to N2 in only one year, expect to study like five to eight hours a day.
So don't feel too bad if you can't.
Or do, and use that frustration to motivate your study.
smiletolerantly@awful.systems 2 days ago
And yet, in non-English speaking countries, virtually every kid is taught English to a level that’s at least “roughly business”.
I also reject your premise of 8 hours / day for a year; how about 1-2 hours / day for 4-8 years.
In the case of English, school kids would get more like 2-4hrs per week and be perfectly fluent after a couple of years, btw.
Get_Off_My_WLAN@fedia.io 1 day ago
Both are possible. I got to N2 in one year as a full-time student in Japan by studying (school + at home) around 6-8 hours per day. People outside of Japan don't get as many chances to actually use the language, so the same amount of study of course might yield less in that case.
Most westerners take 2-3 years (3-4 hours per day) to get to N2, which is reasonable. So my hours are about the same, just I crammed two years into one (because I really needed to).
Whereas many Chinese speakers tend to pass it in less than a year of getting to Japan because they already have a huge head start on kanji knowledge.
The relationship with languages you already know changes things a lot. The proximity and opportunities to use it are really important too, I think.
Practically every European I've met has pretty good English, I've noticed that. But most people in Japan I've met don't. Many, if not, most of them studied it in school. They also get tested on it as part of university entrance exams. But most of them don't need it much outside of those contexts, so I don't blame them for not being able to speak English either.