<p>How many years do people take a (romantic) language before they are proficient/fluent/whatever and no longer need to study it to speak it?</p>
<p>how much longer does it take for an asian language?</p>
<p>It varies greatly from person to person.</p>
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<p>If you go and live in a country where the language is spoken, in a place where you will have to speak the language to get by, then on average it takes about 4-5 months to get basic conversational profiency, with fluency coming over time after that. There really is no better way to gain fluency, which is why colleges strongly encourage study abroad for their language majors.</p>
<p>Yes, there was research done on Americans learning Chinese back in the 1980s, and the royal road to learning the language was to study abroad. VERY FEW monolingual native speakers of English learn Chinese well enough to work as an interpreter, as I did for many years after an undergraduate major in Chinese and three years of residence in Taiwan.</p>
<p>for me for spanish...3 years. practiced an hour a day though</p>
<p>I learned the languages I know by living in countries where they were spoken (French and English in Belgium and the United States). International schools sometimes offer immersion programs where you study the language from a very young age. The kids I know who have taken part in my school's program have a decently high level of proficiency, but I wouldn't say they're fluent--and they've been studying it since they were 6.</p>
<p>As a FL teacher, I can tell you that it takes 2 things to be truly fluent - at least 4-6 years of study (so you're literate) plus immersion for an extended period of time - 1 year minimum. Immersion alone won't do it because you can't read or write. Immersion is necessary to get the true flow of the colloquial speech. Fluency is different than proficiency. It takes a lot more to be fluent.</p>
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<p>I'll agree with post #7 that the great thing about literacy BEFORE you go overseas is that you don't get into the rut of living the life of the illiterate expatriate. There was an advantage, among the Americans I knew in Taiwan, to having studied Chinese before going over, because being able to read (a little) motivated curiosity about being able to read better.</p>
<p>Hate to sound presidential, but it depends on your definition of fluency. My D has an aptitude for languages. At age 14 we threw her into a German school. She knew only a handful of phrases or words before beginning. Besides attending school, she went to a tutor for 2 hours a day. (Now down to once or twice a week.) She could handle superficial conversation after a couple months, but she is still - nearly 2 years later - struggling in some of the technical subjects (like chemistry and economics). Yet, she generally converses easily, and recently presented a 15 minute physics project in german and did well. (Got a 1, in fact.) I would say she probably has the fluency of a 10 or 12 year old, after an intense 20 months.</p>
<p>I, on the other hand, don't have near the people contact she does (nor the aptitude), and struggle mightily. H has people contact (work) but not formal study, so he butchers the grammar, but makes himself understood. S had 3 years in HS, and 2 years in college before coming to Germany for 8 months. By the end of his study in Germany, people were surprised to learn he was American.</p>
<p>I think that immersion has a lot to do with boosting motivation. Although my German isn't very good, I know foods very well, because I have to buy groceries! lol. I also agree with tokenadult about learning at least a little before you go.</p>
<p>binx, I agree--it depends very much on the person. I've always had an easy time with languages. I was thrown into a Belgian school at age 7 with only a few words' preparation. When I left the country two years later I was pretty much fluent in French--still am, I guess, though I've lost some of the slang and colloquial expressions.</p>
<p>English was easier. I had two years of rudimentary grammar behind me from school, but later I realized that movies and song lyrics had actually helped me more.</p>
<p>Depends on your goals--if you just want to be able to understand 90% of what you hear and to express your everyday needs and wishes and communicate your thoughts on general topics as well as read a daily newspaper with understanding--that can be accomplished with one year of college-level study and one year of in-country experience with immersion in the culture. If you want to "pass for a native" even 10 or more years in the country may not do it, although highly motivated, language-sensitive types can nearly manage it. Often the best speakers of a FL are married to native speakers of that language and speak it at home all the time.</p>
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<p>Probably the most ridiculous thing about American education is the teaching of foreign languages. The only thing I can I think of is the current system must have been developed at one of the early east coast or European colleges in the 1700's and modeled forever thereafter. Possibly because they taught ancient Greek or perhaps Latin this way. There has to be some sort of reason for this gross absurdity.</p>
<p>People can often take 4 or 5 years of Spanish and not be able to effectively understand what the waittress says to them in a Mexican restaurant. They can do an ok job of painstakenly writing a paragraph on a passage from Don Quijote. If good students, they can test out of Spanish in college</p>
<p>Let's say we actually wanted kids to speak languages, not just do AP's, look good on college apps and have a decent reading knowlege. You would have them taught to speak their foreign language of choice in kindergarten and nothing but their language of choice. Then they could speak fairly well, with the proper accent. You could then proceed with the typical language class of once per day to keep them moving along and not forgetting the language. A couple of years later after the kids have then learned to read and write in their native language you could go back and easily teach them to read and write the foreign language. Voila!! a command of the language superior to that of virtually any Ivy language major, who doesn't go for a foreign language immersion program in the foreign language country. In a great many cases, the kid's accents would never be able to be achieved as an adult by the typical language learner with the IVY language major</p>
<p>Don't get me wrong, you could still struggle around with additional foreign languages, maybe even as now done, if you like written grammar rules and the like.</p>
<p>A telling personal example. My wife grew up along the boerder. Her mom had no formal schooling in Mexico. Wife for many years only spoke Spanish to her mother once on the week by phone and hardly anyone else. Wife did not study Spanish inm school. At the age of 30, post RN degree and working on a BA, wife took a course in Spanish at the University of Houston. "Spanish for Spanish Speakers" It was a 3 credit course, they taught the written grammar, punctuation and spelling. In Spanish of course with some explanations in English if helpful. After that wife went to Mexico and held her own with Mexican university students. Took a few weeks for reading and writing skills to build speed. All of the struggling around in American highschools and colleges could be accomplished with a 3 credit course or two if you would just teach little kids foreign languages.</p>
<p>I've learned Japanese 3 and a half years, 6 months of which were in Japan, and I can carry on a conversation pretty well, and can read enough to save my life at a restaurant/sign a cell contract.</p>
<p>In 3 years though, my Spanish was much better.</p>
<p>The best part about languages? Forgetting them in about a month...gah.</p>
<p>Can anyone comment on the requirement of many international relations programs that require a student to be fluent in a foreign language (spoken) language? My D is interested in international relations but has taken Latin throughout HS. Can she become "fluent" by taking the language during college?</p>
<p>Yes, as long as she devotes herself to the study.</p>
<p>I don't know how foreign language curriculums were developed in this country, but I wonder if it was in preparation for those students going on to graduate study. Many PhD programs require a foreign language test. It's not usually too difficult for anyone who's had basic FL study - you have to be able to read the foreign language so you can access papers in your field from other parts of the world, not order in a restaurant. In fact, German has different words for someone who translates verbal speech and someone who translates written works, recognizing that they are two separate specialties. My own FL experience - years of French classroom study, only to find myself as an adult living in Germany. I'm better at reading a newspaper in French, but can ride a bus, go to the doctor and shop in German. I probably have the conversational level of a five year old (some of my best teachers were pre-schoolers), so I think you learn what you're exposed to and there are many facets of language acquisition. I was told by a linguist that if you don't make the sounds of a particular language before adolescence, you will always speak with an accent, however mild. I found that my face often hurt after a full day of German, since it seemed to be using different facial muscles. Of course it is better to learn conversational skills by immersion, that's why we call it our 'mother tongue'. I do think that no matter how rusty your language is, it can be called up from the depths if you're in a situation where you need it. A combination of classroom and then immersion seems to me to be the best for adult learners (anyone over 13).</p>
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<p>This is a sore subject with me. I took a group of kids (including my own) to Europe and these kids were going into their 4th year of a language. They might be able to conjugate an irregular verb (on paper), but their conversational skills were nil. On the other hand, a friend's daughter spent a lot of time in France (plus a lot of French was spoken at home) and she was VERY fluent. However, she actually almost flunked her school class in French.</p>
<p>I can really speak no language other than English, but I am not shy, and when I am in a country for more than a week or two (work, vacation, or on an expedition), I can actually carry on some (very context-restricted) conversations. That's happened to me in France, Haiti, The Netherlands, and in Romania. But it all seems to be in short-term memory; a few weeks after leaving the country, my mind goes blank in the language cells.</p>
<p>For my son's first French class, he had a teacher that everyone in the school tried to get, and he really emphasized "story-telling" in the language. From the first few days, he encouraged the kids to tell/write stories in French (even only a sentence or two at the beginning). That really helped. But he retired and because of a series of events, the entire language department was kind of thrown into turmoil without a solid curriculum to fall back on.</p>
<p>Anyway, the point of all of this is that there is no correlation between "year of a language" and "fluency." Sometimes they seem totally unrelated.</p>
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<p>I totally agree that total immersion is the way to go. A cousin of mine was rejected from medical schools here in the USA, but desparately wanted to be a doctor. He was accepted at the Catholic University in Rome, but had to take a 3 month language course in order to be a student at the university. After 3 months, he was totally fluent and was able to study medicine and take oral examinations. Of course, all he did was speak Italian during this time. There was absolutely NO English spoken anywhere, any time. It was survival of the fittest.</p>
<p>On the other hand, my dd started high school with several years of Spanish behind her, but decided to study French. Her teacher the first two years was wonderful and it was promised that no English whatsoever would be spoken in the classroom beginning with Honors French III in Junior Year. Unfortunately, however, her teacher left the school and the replacement was very poor, at best. After 4 full years of HONORS French, my dd speaks very little, can write very little, and understands very little ("very little" meaning no more than after say, 2.5 years of study). It's been a BIG disappointment.</p>
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<p>My daughter studied German starting in junior high and has a BS in foreign languages (general, but with German emphasis). After graduate degree (in music) she went to Germany on Rotary fellowship (she had to pass oral and written exam to be accepted to German program). (She found television, particularly German dubbed American soap operas to be most helpful for language skills, or so she said when she wanted a TV!) She was fine in Hochschule, but regional dialects threw her, the newspaper is difficult to process, and any technical, business, official German is intimidating. To the listener, she sounds "almost" native. Her husband is Swedish, with no German study. His German is "picked up" and it is much more idiomatic, though less "correct". She knows several ways to convey what she wants to say, but it is not the natural way, rather the translated way. </p>
<p>Her toddler has German baby sitter, but otherwise hears no German at home. My daughter thinks she should learn German from Germans, and they will put her in preschool so that she will be prepared for school German. My daughter thinks it would be a bad idea for her to teach her German for the above reasons. </p>
<p>From this, it seems the best approach is some basic grammar study, so that structure is understood, some vocabulary is familiar, and then immersion in native situations for fluency. She has been studying/speaking German for twenty years. She is fluent, but she does not think herself totally competent, because of the limitations of her skills in various situations.</p>
<p>About the "learning the language from a significant other": it is a handicap in the relationship, IMHO. One tends to be stuck emotionally and psychologically at the age of the language skills, and in the heat of battle, guess who has the advantage????? One learns a "particular" vocabulary, however........</p>
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<p>texdad's post stricks a nerve with me.</p>
<p>I think the requirement for four years of a single language at most elite colleges is wrongheaded. One of the "things I'd do differently" if I were going back to high school, is that instead of taking four years of French and finishing in 11th grade, I'd take two of French, two of Spanish, and one of either German or maybe Latin. If I then wanted to continue, I'd have a decent base in two or three languages. (Have to start in eighth grade to do this, of course.)</p>
<p>The creeping of language instruction into the lower grades in middle schools seems to me to be more or less useless. It appears not to accelerate anything much, and may be mostly "playing" at the language instead of serious language instruction. I don't see that todays language mastery is any better than it was 30 years ago when there was no foreign language program in lower schools.</p>
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