¿How long to achieve true second language competence and basic mastery?
October 25, 2011 1:15 PM Subscribe
¿How long to achieve true second language competence and basic mastery?
Hello, How long does it take on average for an adult immersed in another language to really achieve a basic mastery?
I have 2 years living in Argentina, 5 years working in South America, and classes with a private teacher in The U.S. Sometimes I get very frustrated that my Spanish (Castellano here in Argentina, and Argentina slang? Good god!) skills are not where they need to be. A few things, I have learned from people from various countries and accents, I'm a poor student of the language and my grammar is not so pretty, I seem to have more trouble than most with comprehension, but a better vocabulary and ability to communicate my ideas. So most are better taking it in and I seem to be able to put it out. I took an online placement test from my former university today and received a mid-intermediate score.
Anyway, it's always a frustrated but satisfying experience. This question is based more out of curiosity than anything. Thanks, chau!
Hello, How long does it take on average for an adult immersed in another language to really achieve a basic mastery?
I have 2 years living in Argentina, 5 years working in South America, and classes with a private teacher in The U.S. Sometimes I get very frustrated that my Spanish (Castellano here in Argentina, and Argentina slang? Good god!) skills are not where they need to be. A few things, I have learned from people from various countries and accents, I'm a poor student of the language and my grammar is not so pretty, I seem to have more trouble than most with comprehension, but a better vocabulary and ability to communicate my ideas. So most are better taking it in and I seem to be able to put it out. I took an online placement test from my former university today and received a mid-intermediate score.
Anyway, it's always a frustrated but satisfying experience. This question is based more out of curiosity than anything. Thanks, chau!
My personal experience would suggest five years to get a decent grasp of grammar and syntax, give or take a couple of years based on how much reading of the non-native language is done. Even now, after forty plus years of immersion, I will have to look up some grammatical rules.
Dreaming in the non-native language happened to me around the five year mark, but anything related to arithmetic is still in my native language: I still think of multiplication tables in Italian and I counted chromosomes at the microscope in Italian until the day I retired.
posted by francesca too at 1:38 PM on October 25, 2011
Dreaming in the non-native language happened to me around the five year mark, but anything related to arithmetic is still in my native language: I still think of multiplication tables in Italian and I counted chromosomes at the microscope in Italian until the day I retired.
posted by francesca too at 1:38 PM on October 25, 2011
This is not a helpful answer, but I think it varies quite a lot by person - even if the two people take the same classes, practice the same amount, and are in the same amount of immersion. My experience with language classes has been that there is a great deal of variance in natural ability.
posted by insectosaurus at 1:43 PM on October 25, 2011
posted by insectosaurus at 1:43 PM on October 25, 2011
Response by poster: I'm familiar with the 10.000 hour rule, but wonder if it applies to language as well as other things. The reason I question it is that we have built in, innate abilities to learn language. Chomsky called it the language acquisition devise. Maybe we can learn a language in less than 10,000 hours?
I have also read that it takes a child until his 9th year to learn master his native language. If a child was exposed to 4 hours of language a day for 9 years he would have approximately 13,000 hours. This supports the 10,000 hour rule.
Does anyone else have any anecdotal stories regarding their personal experiences they would like to share?
posted by Che boludo! at 1:52 PM on October 25, 2011
I have also read that it takes a child until his 9th year to learn master his native language. If a child was exposed to 4 hours of language a day for 9 years he would have approximately 13,000 hours. This supports the 10,000 hour rule.
Does anyone else have any anecdotal stories regarding their personal experiences they would like to share?
posted by Che boludo! at 1:52 PM on October 25, 2011
The answer to your question is "immersion." This is far, far harder to achieve these days than it was before the internet, because immersion means no English language media, emails, forums, podcast, NPR, Metafilters or anything else. It means total, endless, all encompassing, exhausting immersion. I couldn't remember the English word for "chandelier" and was occasionally dreaming in my second language after six weeks of blackout-level immersion. I found it horrendous going and was miserable and depressed and cut-off from the world, but I acquired a fluency I had never had before.
But I have to tell you this level of fluency was not in fact very fluent. I suck out loud at languages despite working very hard at them. I have, as insectosaurus mentions, near zero natural ability. I am also an extremely self-concious speaker of foreign languages, which makes me very slow to use new language skills. YMMV.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:11 PM on October 25, 2011
But I have to tell you this level of fluency was not in fact very fluent. I suck out loud at languages despite working very hard at them. I have, as insectosaurus mentions, near zero natural ability. I am also an extremely self-concious speaker of foreign languages, which makes me very slow to use new language skills. YMMV.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:11 PM on October 25, 2011
I had always heard that you've reached a solid level of mastery when you start dreaming in the other language. This happened to me once after total immersion (during a summer job 40-50 hours a week) with a group of Spanish-only speakers.
As a point of reference, although I'm a native speaker (my accent is a dead giveaway), I don't get to practice much and get rusty. During that summer, though, it was Spanish or nothing. By summer's end I was dreaming in Spanish and it was wonderful. I would love to find another way of getting immersed like that again, but those opportunities are few and far between now. Vacations aren't nearly long enough and it'd be impractical at my job. I have to content myself to listening to the news and whatnot in Spanish on the radio and occasionally reading Spanish blogs.
posted by jquinby at 2:11 PM on October 25, 2011
As a point of reference, although I'm a native speaker (my accent is a dead giveaway), I don't get to practice much and get rusty. During that summer, though, it was Spanish or nothing. By summer's end I was dreaming in Spanish and it was wonderful. I would love to find another way of getting immersed like that again, but those opportunities are few and far between now. Vacations aren't nearly long enough and it'd be impractical at my job. I have to content myself to listening to the news and whatnot in Spanish on the radio and occasionally reading Spanish blogs.
posted by jquinby at 2:11 PM on October 25, 2011
I'm going to second 5 years for getting comfortably fluent, and that's assuming pretty constant exposure & production. You will still run across words & phrases every day that you don't know, but you should be able to converse comfortably at that point & have a good general grasp on what you are told by the public at large. You could probably rush that figure with intensive coursework & exposure & if you're just plain good with languages, but 5 seems about right for most of us.
posted by Ys at 2:24 PM on October 25, 2011
posted by Ys at 2:24 PM on October 25, 2011
Incidentally, on the lines of personal anectdotes: I have a child who was raised fully bi-lingual. Until age 3, the English speaking parent & the Spanish speaking parent were around constantly, with Spanish dominating household use. Now that the Spanish-speaking parent is working in a different city and is around significantly less (leading to a general tendency of English in the home), she is losing her ability to produce. Comprehension is still fine, but vocabulary & grammar are no longer advancing, and she is starting to "favor" the English to the detriment of her ability to produce in Spanish. The takeaway lesson here is: It needs practice, practice practice to maintain fluency, once you've got language.
posted by Ys at 2:32 PM on October 25, 2011
posted by Ys at 2:32 PM on October 25, 2011
Here's some anecdotal stuff:
I live in Mexico, and my goal is to be fluent. I have the equivalent of four semesters of college Spanish, which ended in 1979. I kept it somewhat alive with sporadic self-study, watching telenovelas, and volunteering as a translator (hah!) for Spanish-speaking immigrants. At some point I was watching a telenovela and suddenly realized that I understood almost everything -- but when it came to speaking I was practically mute.
I've been in Mexico about 9 months now. My comprehension is nearly 100% but regardless of what polite people tell me, my speaking still lags. The jabbering in my head veers from English to Spanish and back again depending on which language I most recently read or heard, but I'm still self-conscious about speaking Spanish and screw up.
I can say that I've improved a lot through three exercises:
- Every time I learn something useful (usually a phrase), I put it into a flash card app in my iPhone and it keeps showing up in the rotation until I've memorized it and can produce it reliably.
- Every day I read out loud in Spanish for 20 minutes. Because I'm not having to create the sentences myself, I can focus on my accent and sounding fluid, and it seems that just reading someone else's sentences aloud helps me later build my own.
- Every day I write several sentences or an entire page in Spanish describing what I did or saw that day. Later, a Mexican friend helps me correct it.
Dating a Spanish speaker is also a great way to speed up your learning!
posted by ceiba at 3:04 PM on October 25, 2011 [1 favorite]
I live in Mexico, and my goal is to be fluent. I have the equivalent of four semesters of college Spanish, which ended in 1979. I kept it somewhat alive with sporadic self-study, watching telenovelas, and volunteering as a translator (hah!) for Spanish-speaking immigrants. At some point I was watching a telenovela and suddenly realized that I understood almost everything -- but when it came to speaking I was practically mute.
I've been in Mexico about 9 months now. My comprehension is nearly 100% but regardless of what polite people tell me, my speaking still lags. The jabbering in my head veers from English to Spanish and back again depending on which language I most recently read or heard, but I'm still self-conscious about speaking Spanish and screw up.
I can say that I've improved a lot through three exercises:
- Every time I learn something useful (usually a phrase), I put it into a flash card app in my iPhone and it keeps showing up in the rotation until I've memorized it and can produce it reliably.
- Every day I read out loud in Spanish for 20 minutes. Because I'm not having to create the sentences myself, I can focus on my accent and sounding fluid, and it seems that just reading someone else's sentences aloud helps me later build my own.
- Every day I write several sentences or an entire page in Spanish describing what I did or saw that day. Later, a Mexican friend helps me correct it.
Dating a Spanish speaker is also a great way to speed up your learning!
posted by ceiba at 3:04 PM on October 25, 2011 [1 favorite]
I grew up in a town that was 70% french, went to preschool partly in french, went to a high school that was in a building shared with a french high school, took french every year up until Grade 10, got my University degree at a bilingual University in a town with the largest number of french speakers outside of Quebec, took five weeks of intensive french immersion, currently live in a city that is decidedly bilingual, and can barely speak a word of french. There's more french involved that I'd rather not go into.
For most people, this would be enough to be completely fluent. It all depends on the person...
posted by Yowser at 3:44 PM on October 25, 2011
For most people, this would be enough to be completely fluent. It all depends on the person...
posted by Yowser at 3:44 PM on October 25, 2011
Response by poster: Complete immersion is getting harder and harder to find in internationally diverse cities. Working internationally with English as the lingua franca makes it even more difficult. I think that's one of my problems.
Oh well, I'm more fluent than 99.9999999 of the gringo Spanish speakers I've met recently. I welcome the coming Mexican reconquest of The U.S.A. and wish I could get a decent taco in the Southern Hemisphere.
posted by Che boludo! at 4:46 PM on October 25, 2011
Oh well, I'm more fluent than 99.9999999 of the gringo Spanish speakers I've met recently. I welcome the coming Mexican reconquest of The U.S.A. and wish I could get a decent taco in the Southern Hemisphere.
posted by Che boludo! at 4:46 PM on October 25, 2011
I believe the key really is full immersion and practice practice practice. I'm not sure there's a magic number, because I have thousands and thousands of hours speaking French, but since it's been almost ten years since I used it daily in my working life, it's getting rusty.
(Anecdata
I went to French school (not immersion, a school for French as first language kids) from Kindergarten 'til Grade 11, then spent a year living in the French part of Belgium. Even though I'd been speaking French for 12 years at that point, I wouldn't say I really consolidated the language until I was fully immersed. This was the 80s, though. There was no English language TV, books in English cost a fortune and the local library had few to none, there was no email and even calling across the ocean was prohibitively expensive. I was dreaming in French by the end of the first month. By the end of the eleventh, I would stumble over vocabulary in English.
Then I moved back, and didn't really speak french for about 11 years. At 30, I got a job that required me to speak French at a high level (talking with reporters about trade, among other things). I did about 10 weekly 2-hour sessions one-on-one with a French teacher and was back up to the fluency I had as a teen, with a more sophisticated vocabulary, to boot.
I did that job for two years, then didn't speak any French at all for about five years until my kid started French school herself. She and I speak French to each other, any business at the school is conducted in French, most of the parents talk among themselves in French. But outside of that, I speak almost none. I would say I'm about back to where I was before I spent the year in Belgium.
So we're back to practice practice practice. Self-confidence plays a big role in this. When the choice is speak the foreign language or not be understood, it compels you to speak even if you are self-conscious. If you are forced to do that enough, over time both your fluency and your confidence grows. If you can always--when pushes comes to shove--do what you need to do in English, the process is slowed down.)
posted by looli at 5:57 PM on October 25, 2011
(Anecdata
I went to French school (not immersion, a school for French as first language kids) from Kindergarten 'til Grade 11, then spent a year living in the French part of Belgium. Even though I'd been speaking French for 12 years at that point, I wouldn't say I really consolidated the language until I was fully immersed. This was the 80s, though. There was no English language TV, books in English cost a fortune and the local library had few to none, there was no email and even calling across the ocean was prohibitively expensive. I was dreaming in French by the end of the first month. By the end of the eleventh, I would stumble over vocabulary in English.
Then I moved back, and didn't really speak french for about 11 years. At 30, I got a job that required me to speak French at a high level (talking with reporters about trade, among other things). I did about 10 weekly 2-hour sessions one-on-one with a French teacher and was back up to the fluency I had as a teen, with a more sophisticated vocabulary, to boot.
I did that job for two years, then didn't speak any French at all for about five years until my kid started French school herself. She and I speak French to each other, any business at the school is conducted in French, most of the parents talk among themselves in French. But outside of that, I speak almost none. I would say I'm about back to where I was before I spent the year in Belgium.
So we're back to practice practice practice. Self-confidence plays a big role in this. When the choice is speak the foreign language or not be understood, it compels you to speak even if you are self-conscious. If you are forced to do that enough, over time both your fluency and your confidence grows. If you can always--when pushes comes to shove--do what you need to do in English, the process is slowed down.)
posted by looli at 5:57 PM on October 25, 2011
1. As insectosaurus said, it varies widely from person to person. I've lived 40 years in Italy, and although my grammar and vocab are so good that I'm often tempted to correct mistakes by native speakers, the moment I open my mouth it's obvious to any Italian that I'm a Brit (or, at best, a Northern European). Yet a good friend of mine, another Brit who arrived here in Italy at almost the same time, and is a qualified, employed language teacher to boot, still has a cartoon-character English accent that puts your teeth on edge, and still cannot pronounce the Italian word for "England" correctly.
2. I also have anecdotal evidence that it depends very much on your age; the younger you are, the more likely it is that you'll assimilate a new language well. I lived in Germany all through my 20s, and already after 5 or 6 years, Germans curious about my non-German name were astounded when I told them I wasn't German. Sadly I'm losing it through lack of opportunity to practice, which confirms the comments upthread about constant use (and daily practice for the past 40 years hasn't made my Italian native-standard - presumably because of my age).
posted by aqsakal at 11:01 PM on October 25, 2011
2. I also have anecdotal evidence that it depends very much on your age; the younger you are, the more likely it is that you'll assimilate a new language well. I lived in Germany all through my 20s, and already after 5 or 6 years, Germans curious about my non-German name were astounded when I told them I wasn't German. Sadly I'm losing it through lack of opportunity to practice, which confirms the comments upthread about constant use (and daily practice for the past 40 years hasn't made my Italian native-standard - presumably because of my age).
posted by aqsakal at 11:01 PM on October 25, 2011
Complete immersion is getting harder and harder to find in internationally diverse cities. Working internationally with English as the lingua franca makes it even more difficult. I think that's one of my problems.
Yes. My husband wanted to move to France. This is fine in theory because with 6 or 8 weeks of immersion, I'd gain enough language skills to make this viable. Except that spending my days with a native English speaker, this would never happen and my French would never, ever get good enough to make living in France comfortable for me. I really, really believe it's immersion or bust and if you can't do immersion, you're stuck with the best your natural abilities will grant you.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:47 AM on October 26, 2011 [1 favorite]
Yes. My husband wanted to move to France. This is fine in theory because with 6 or 8 weeks of immersion, I'd gain enough language skills to make this viable. Except that spending my days with a native English speaker, this would never happen and my French would never, ever get good enough to make living in France comfortable for me. I really, really believe it's immersion or bust and if you can't do immersion, you're stuck with the best your natural abilities will grant you.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:47 AM on October 26, 2011 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:37 PM on October 25, 2011