Time
Posted on | January 21, 2012 | No Comments
To learn a language (whatever “learning a language” means to you) you need to spend a specific amount of seconds in that language. Every day we get 86400 seconds. We spend about 28800 sleeping, so that leaves us with 57600 seconds (16 hours). IF it takes a year to learn a language (and I mean a TOTAL of one year of learning, not 365 days in which you sleep and eat and learn), you’ll have achieved your particular flavor of fluency in 1 year, 6 months, 15 days, 15 hours and 25 minutes if you spend every waking hour exposed to your target language. Now here’s some nicely formatted data:
[Assuming a year of learning/exposure to acquire fluency in a language]
16 hours a day exposed to your target language:: Takes 1 year and 6 months to learn it.
15 hours a day exposed to your target language: Takes 1 year, 7 months and 6 days to learn it.
14 hours a day exposed to your target language: Takes 1 year, 8 months and 17 days to learn it.
13 hours a day exposed to your target language: Takes 1 year, 10 months and 4 days to learn it.
12 hours a day exposed to your target language: Takes 2 years.
So one hour of learning less every day can increase the time until we learn our language for a bit more than a month. I can’t stress the importance of daily exposure enough! Dust off your headphones and get that sweet tune into your head. Make sure you’ve always got some foreign language exposure going on. If you’re reading English stuff, listen to your target language. If you’re listening to English stuff, read in your target language! Preferably listen and read your target language at the same time 
. And if you can’t live without that English-speaking tv show, do flashcards reviews while you watch it!
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