I usually spend 1-2 hours. Any more than that and I get too tired. At my pace it takes about a year and a half to 2 years to get to where I can read and listen. But I reckon it could be cut down if I was spending more time a day.

I heard that training diplomats spend 8 hours a day on the language they're learning: a full time job. Imagine that. I'd be completely exhausted and my brain would be buzzing by the end. You reckon you could do that?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

My goal is to spend 100 minutes per week listening and also 100 minutes reading. Usually I achieve a little bit more, sometimes life is just too busy.

I also track the time spent. Seeing the progress is a good motivation for me

[–] jouzu 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I feel you. I've taken a similar approach with about 1.5h per day, but having a variety of activities to do each day. I usually do flashcards, writing a (quite) short text (see my post history) and if I still feel like it, watch some TV-shows, play games or read something. This way I can keep it relatively fresh and engaging.

Btw, what languages are you guys learning? (Is "guys" a gender-neutral pronoun yet? If not, what would you recommend?)

[–] droning_in_my_ears 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm learning Spanish, Swedish and German. I'll probably learn all the major European languages at some point.

[–] jouzu 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Oh, very cool. I'm actually a native German speaker, so if you ever have a question, I'd be happy to help / correct your writing.

[–] droning_in_my_ears 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thanks a lot for the offer :D

I'm actually coming to Germany for a masters in March. So my focus is definitely gonna be on that. My German is still very weak. Maybe because I kept getting distracted with Spanish where I'm much closer to fluency :P

I'll need to focus squarely on German for everyday life even though the masters is in English.

[–] jouzu 1 points 11 months ago

That sounds like a lot of fun and good learning opportunities :)

All the best with your further studies.

[–] philthi 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I also aim for a minimum of 2 hours a day. Occasionally I'll do much more, but often my mind is pretty wiped on that language after 2 hours. It's been one year (or a little over 750 hours) and I can read teen fiction (e.g. harry potter) and listen to some native content (e.g. kids cartoons like Pokémon). I think 2 years (or 1500 hours) I'd expect to understand most content and people without needing them to speak slowly or carefully.

My reading goal is counted in words though, I've only just started reading in my target language but want to read 1,000,000 words in that language over the next year on top of completing the 2 hours a day listening.

It's also worth mentioning that listening has become far less tiring towards the end of this year, compared to the start.

[–] philthi 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

To add to this, I thought I might also mention that my ability to speak is still not particularly good yet, it's very rough and slow. I'm hoping between 1000-1200 hours of listening to see that improve as my mental model of the language fills out more completely.

[–] droning_in_my_ears 1 points 11 months ago

Yeah speaking is always the last thing I work on too because you need a partner and I prefer to be confident in my ability to understand first.

I count my progress in words that I know. Usually around 15k to 20k is a good level to start speaking. I don't know how much reading it takes before I get there. I suppose it depends on how new-word-dense the material I read is. It's always a big leap going from learner material to native speaker material but before long simple texts won't do it anymore and I start reading novels to hit my daily goal.