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Thread: How long does it take to become fluent in speaking, reading and writing Chinese?
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[quote=GUEST19376,372240]cont: I sat an exam and passed the exam that qualified me as having sufficient german to study at a uni. Not everyone went into this particular class - some could sit the exam immediately, others got a 1 year course instead of a 6 mth course -so that gives you an idea of my entry level when I went in & when I came out. When I was attending classes at uni, I learnt a LOT of new vocabulary but had enough sense of the basic grammar structure to recognise new spoken words, be able to write them down and look them up later. I coped. I passed my masters degree - in law- in german, including a horrible research thesis at the end which I somehow got through. The masters degree was 2 years long and whilst painful, the process definitely helped me to become fluent - very fluent. I had to research and digest, at speed, technical information in german and the process really helped my language development. Also in the last 2 years - quite coincidentally - I was in a relationship with a native german speaker. My partner spoke english well, but we were living with a whole extended family of people who only spoke german and this REALLY REALLY helped my language development a lot. For anyone who is learning a language - whatever age you are - I would most sincerely recommend this as the absolute fastest way to get fluent - by necessity. It's worth paying for - it progressed the speed of my development by years I think. And I got to an amazing german standard - even if I say so myself - I could hold a conversation for 10 minutes or so without a native speaker realising that I had an accent. After around 10 mins I would make a mistake or betray a sign of an accent - but most german people who heard me converse for some time were very suprised that I wasn't german. So I think that the amount of time to learn any language definitely depends on: - the amount you start with before you go to the country that speaks that language - the amount of time you spend in that country - and also, in classes in that language in that country. Structure in language learning does help; - ideally, the amount of time you spend at home with people speaking that language. For me - already with advanced german, enough to study at a university in german, another 2 years in a family made me almost completely fluent. There was the occasional word I didn't recognise, but even now - 8 years later with little german practice in between, I can listen to a german audio book and understand it 100% without any need to translate it into my native english. I got so fluent, my german became almost a second native language - the difficulty of the language. Because of the tones, and script, I imagine mandarin is twice if not three times more difficult and therefore lengthier than german - how much commitment you put in. I spent 4 years in germany doing 15 hours a week of formal german study, plus all the extra bits you get by socialising, shopping, studying in the country, etc. cont...[/quote]
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