Full Answer
Based on US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) research, if you start out as a beginner and spend an average of one hour per day working actively on Spanish—such as with a teacher or conversation partner, as well as doing homework—then it can take 480 hours to reach conversational fluency.
All told there are 275 hours of lessons across all of the different levels and courses. It is a lot, but the nice thing with Babbel is that you can jump around from level to level or course to course.
Set yourself a goal of completing 3-4 lessons per day, as this amount ensures you don't overwhelm your brain with too much information that you will struggle to remember! Each lesson takes about ten minutes to complete, so you can set aside less than an hour per day.
“An hour a day five days a week is therefore going to be more beneficial than a five-hour blitz once a week.” According to the FSI index, it would take 96 weeks at this pace to achieve basic fluency in a Group 1 language, or nearly two years.
If you were to use Babbel as your only means of learning a language you would walk away with a foundational knowledge but you would be far from fluent. Babbel doesn't claim to turn you into a near native speaker in a new language.
According to the CEFR scale, three weeks of study with Babbel should get you to an A1 level (the most rudimentary one).
That's because the central principle of the Babbel language learning approach is that people should spend about 15 minutes per day studying a new language. This is surprisingly short compared to the length of time university students are expected to study a language nightly (~90 minutes).
Babbel German Program Structure From a high level, the Babbel program is broken down into around 15 different overarching levels, such as Newcomer, Beginner I, Beginner II, Intermediate and so. And there's even some levels that cover more thematic topics like Business German and Traditions.
Priced at $179 for a lifetime subscription, it's definitely worth it. Babbel offers 14 languages and entertains learning along the way. This app is user-friendly, and we liked how easy it was to navigate. We also enjoyed the variety of ways to learn that were seamlessly explained along the way.
According to an FSI study, i.e. the Foreign Service Institute, it should take a new learner approximately 600 classroom hours to achieve conversational fluency in Spanish. They also suggest an approximate 1:1 ratio between the time spent independently studying Spanish and the time spent in a classroom.
1. Mandarin Chinese. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons.
When Is the Best Time to Study a Language? Ideally, you'd want to study when your mind is both fresh and ready to learn. And there are actually periods of time when you're brain is more open to acquiring new knowledge. Between 10 am – 2 pm and between 4 pm and 10 pm, according to studies.
Category I: Spanish (24 weeks), French (30 weeks) Category II: German (36 weeks), Indonesian (36 weeks) Category III: Russian (44 weeks), Greek (44 weeks) Category IV: Arabic (88 weeks), Chinese (88 weeks), Japanese (88 weeks)
There's a lot of Spanish lessons At the time of this article there are a little over 60 individual Spanish courses on Babbel with each one having anywhere from 10-20+ lessons. If you're starting from scratch there's enough Spanish lessons on Babbel to keep you busy for a while.
How Much Time And Energy Are You Willing To Spend Learning Spanish? The Foreign Service Institute—the people who train U.S. diplomats and foreign affairs officials—estimate that it will take 600-750 class hours for most native English speakers to learn Spanish.
approximately 10 to 15 minutesBabbel's language lessons take approximately 10 to 15 minutes each, so tackling a couple of lessons daily will put you on the right track toward language proficiency.
Babbel offers their language learning program under a subscription model. Monthly plans start at $14 per month, and go down from there depending on...
After a full review of the Babbel Spanish course, in our team's opinion, we do think this language learning program is good. Their combination of s...
If you stick with the Babbel activity calendar and suggested study plan, and complete of all your assigned lessons, you can expect to obtain an int...
One of the most common claims you’ll hear from us is that you can learn to have basic conversations in your new language in three weeks. We even put some Babbel staffers to the test to see how much they could learn in that period of time. The results were overwhelmingly positive!
This model doesn’t exactly give you a strict finish line, but it does provide a framework for how to learn a new language effectively and in a timely manner. Spending 15 minutes on language learning every day will put you on the path to language proficiency, according to our team of language experts.
Another way to gauge how long it might take for you to learn a language is to take a page from the book of American diplomats. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which provides training for U.S.
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages is a commonly used rubric for language proficiency. According to the CEFR scale, three weeks of study with Babbel should get you to an A1 level (the most rudimentary one).
For an English student studying for the Cambridge English exam, this should take about 500 to 600 hours of study.
If you fancy yourself a bit of a budding polyglot, then you’ll probably be aiming for at least a B2 level of fluency: “Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.”
By one estimate, it takes about 200 learning hours to progress from one CEFR level to the other. To reach an A2 level, you’ll need to put in about 180 to 200 hours; for B1, about 350 to 400 total. Mind you, these numbers are specifically geared toward the Cambridge English exam, but English actually happens to be a very difficult language to learn for non-native speakers, so you might need less time if you’re an English speaker studying, say, Italian.
According to the U.S. Foreign Service Institute, it would take the average English-speaking person 2,200 class hours to be able to speak Mandarin at a semi-professional level. If you do the math, that works out to more than five years, assuming you’re studying for one hour per day, which is what most busy people can reasonably afford.
Category I languages like Spanish, French and Danish are easiest for an English speaker to learn, and they will require about 600 to 750 hours of study to master. Category IV languages like Mandarin and Japanese are the most difficult, requiring 2,200 hours for relative fluency.
It’s a given that not everybody learns at the same pace. But in addition to taking your own learning speed into account, it’s also important to consider the following:
Babbel has different subscription options, and the monthly cost decreases based on the length of your subscription. A one-month subscription costs $12.95, a three-month subscription costs $26.85 ( $8.95 per month), a six-month subscription costs $44.70 ( $7.45 per month), and a yearly subscription costs $83.40 ( $6.95 per month).
Babbel’s lessons all follow the same structure throughout the entire course. You’ll learn a few words and phrases, then complete a series of activities to practice using them. The activities are really all that engaging, but they do help you learn new vocabulary, which is what’s most important.
Mondly and Babbel have similar structures, but the content, technology, and general pace of the apps is different. Babbel offers more useful content overall, but keeps some aspects of the language in separate lessons, like grammar. Mondly incorporates grammar into its lessons and has a more interactive approach to learning grammar. Both are good apps for beginners, but Babbel offers more content for intermediate and advanced language learners. The table below compares Babbel vs Mondly to show you some key differences. You can also read the full Mondly review to learn more.
Babbel offers 14 language courses: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Polish, Russian, Dutch, Turkish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Indonesian, and English. Even though Babbel offers multiple languages, a regular subscription only gives you access to one language. The quality of the courses also varies depending on the language you want to study. I decided to take a closer look at Babbel’s Spanish, Norwegian, and Polish courses to see just how different they are.
Babbel is a language app that boasts over 10 million downloads from users around the world. It uses a series of activities to help you improve your reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. Where it differentiates itself from competitors is the quality of its content, its sleek design, and the accuracy of its speech-recognition technology.
This is because native German speakers will learn Spanish differently than native French speakers.
The monthly price decreases if you choose a longer subscription. The price of a one-month subscription is $12.95, a three-month subscription costs $26.85 ($8.95 per month), a six-month subscription costs $44.70 ($7.45 per month), and a yearly subscription costs $83.40 ($6.95 per month).
Using my handy timer on my iPhone, I timed how long it took to complete 20 different lessons. After taking an average, I found it takes approximately 2 minutes to finish a lesson on Duolingo. That’s going at a conscientious pace, and repeating all the sentences aloud as one goes along.
When signing up for Duolingo, you set a daily goal. You can choose between 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes a day. Most of the Duolingo marketing touts “Spending 15 minutes a day learning a new language.”
To finish a language tree on Duolingo in 6 months, you will need to spend a minimum of 130 minutes per day on Duolingo, for a full 180 days. That’s 2 hours and ten minutes. Alrighty them. Read about the evolution of the Duolingo mascot, “Duo,” here.
So, at two minutes per lesson, and 75 lessons per module, that’s 150 minutes per module, or 2.5 hours.
For a language tree with 155 modules, and 75 lessons each, that’s a total of 11,625 lessons. A 5-second ad plays after each lesson.
That’s a total of 75 lessons per module.
Okay, so if you want to get some extra credit, I would recommend that you practice Duolingo with a small whiteboard nearby!
Summary: According to FSI, if you spend 3 hours per day learning Spanish, you’ll achieve fluency in around six months. Reduce your Spanish time to one hour a day and, according to FSI, it will take about 1.5 years to learn. As you can see, Spanish is one of the most accessible languages for English speakers.
Here are some of his best tips for learning a language in three months:
Spending roughly 2 hours a day on Duolingo, it took me 60 days to complete the tree. If you complete one new skill a day, you should reach your target in roughly this amount of time. Shortcuts???
As an added bonus, there is also a ton of content available for each language, easily worth the small monthly cost. So, if you’re learning Spanish or French then Babbel is amazing.
Users have stated that while both language apps offer basic grammar and vocabulary lessons for all their languages, Babbel has a stronger focus on conversation phrases. Compared to Duolingo, Babbel also appears to be buggier with less of an intuitive user experience.
Duolingo can aid in your journey to become fluent, but if you aren’t actively practicing the language with a native speaker or practicing your comprehension skills by listening to native conversations, then you will not become fluent.
Right now Duolingo can get you pretty far: a 2020 study found that learners in Duolingo’s Spanish and French courses performed as well on reading and listening tests as students who took four semesters of university classes — and in about half the time.