When on Earth Will I Finally Learn English???

One of the most frequently asked questions by many people across the world:

‘How long does it take to learn English?’

‘When can I reach a certain level?’

‘When will I become fluent?’

Well, to begin with, there’s no precise answer to this question, unfortunately.

Of course, as a mindful person, you should understand that it’s absolutely impossible to ‘learn’ any language in one week or one month, as some schools/teachers suggest, especially without any prior knowledge. During this period, you can only learn by heart the most basic expressions and, understanding them when used by other people, will be even more difficult.
There are no ‘shortcuts’ to skip a level either, unfortunately, if you really want to master the language at a certain level.

The criteria below can offer you some clarity.

First off, each of us has different learning skills, styles, abilities, and pace of how quickly the taught material can be processed and incorporated into active usage without hesitation.

Second, it also depends a lot on a teacher and their teaching methods/approaches that should be well-adapted to the students’ academic needs and abilities. To speed up the learning process, it’s important to make sure that a learner is placed at the right level by assessing their pre-existing knowledge, so they can get down to learning with the utmost productivity.

To do this, a placement test should be conducted. To follow further progress, it’s important to administer ongoing assessments, such as having learners do progress/achievement tests (to follow students’ progress according to the covered material), diagnostic tests (focused on learners’ weaknesses and areas they should catch up on), and direct tests (usually speaking and/or writing performance resembling authentic real-life situations, such as dialogs, phone conversations, presentations, interviews, writing summaries, etc).

All these kinds of assessments will enable a teacher to evaluate an overall picture of the students’ progress and what areas require ‘filling in the gaps’ in order to confidently proceed to the next unit or level.

Equally important is to give regular, individual, and constructive feedback (verbal and/or written) to your learners. Seeing their improvement will give them much-needed motivation and confidence.

The table below suggests the necessary number of hours and active vocabulary in order to reach a certain CEFR level according to Cambridge Assessment English:

Based on the table, you can do the math of how much time it’ll take you/your students to reach a certain level, given the number of hours you are able to spend daily/weekly/monthly.

Also, don’t forget to put into practice what you learn to foster your active skills, and not let it stay only as passive theoretical knowledge.

There’s also such a thing as the ‘intermediate plateau‘ which means that you feel that you’ve got stuck at an intermediate level and stopped progressing as quickly as you did in the past. In this case, consider making some changes towards your study habits and if you study with a teacher, do share your concerns, so they can be aware of them as well and make the necessary alterations to the study program.

As a final comment, I’d like to say that for a non-native speaker it’s nearly impossible to say that ‘I have finally learned the language!‘ (the exception can be only those who have relocated to English-speaking environments where they have been practicing it for years). Remember that learning is a never-ending and lifelong process, whatever it is.

To give a relevant example, a new word is added to the dictionary every two hours, which means that during the course of one year, almost 4,000 new words are added!

So, arm yourself with a lot of patience and bear in mind that if you study with a teacher, it’s always two-sided collaboration where each of you does your own part, not more, not less. Put all your efforts into it, focus on the joy of the learning process, and/or the final result to keep you going and not lose motivation.

If you want to learn more about the CEFR levels or get your English level checked, you can do it on the website(s) listed here.