I have just come back from a meeting where my boss was asking me to talk to a student who wanted 6 hours of Spanish 5 days a week so they could be intermediate level after a month. We were debating how easy / hard this would be and at the same time discussing what is the nearest we can say is true about language learning.
Now I have been teaching 25 years and have both pretty good academic understanding of language learning and personal experience. My experience tells me that the average learner takes about 6 years to gain what I think of as a good level of fluency with Speaking and Listening. I have never met or know other experienced teachers who have met the mythological super- learners so most of my experience is what I would call average learners. An example is my son. He started at 10 in a Spanish school and is 17 now and doing a Spanish A level where he is predicted to get a A grade pass. So after 7 years of pretty much 5 days a week 6 hours a day of being immersed in the language he is capable of grade A which is around about and high B2 to C1. How long has it taken people here to reach various levels?

An impossible question as it's entirely dependent on the individual but if you have 25 years experience in the subject you don't need me or anybody to tell you that!

The question was about your experience of learning Spanish not a general question .

Hemingway said he learned all the French he needed in a week. Jose Mourinho said he learned fluent Italian in 3 weeks. A good memory is a useful starting point.

I learnt all the Hungarian I need in a matter of hours -
(Yes / no, please / thank you / hello / goodbye & the numbers)



Thanks for this part of your post: "My experience tells me that the average learner takes about 6 years to gain what I think of as a good level of fluency with Speaking and Listening." I've been here 5 or so years and have been feeling bad about my somewhere-intermediate level, but maybe I'm not too far below the average.

Yes memory is required for sure and being nearly 70 something of an issue for me. I keep trying and yes have learned a bit and sort of get by but can't have anywhere near a proper conversation with a Spaniard as I get mental blocks memorising words. Perks of getting older lol

I never sat any exams so perhaps can't claim to have reached a particular level. However, when I eventually stopped lessons I was using the intermediate/advanced coursebook used by the language school I attended. When we first arrived we did a semi-intensive course, 2 hours of lessons 5 morning a week for a month. After that I went to weekly group lessons for 18 months (never more than 6 in the group and my teacher kept moving me up to the next level so I didn't get bored) and for the final 6 months I was also doing a one to one intercambio with a Spanish student of the language school who was learning English (the school suggested we paired up and gave us a room to meet in on two evenings a week). That was invaluable, and we progressed from the usual initial stuff like talking about ourselves and our families to discussing news stories from Spanish and English sources. I remember a really good debate about assisted suicide when there was a case in all the Spanish papers involving a severely disabled young woman who wanted the right to end her life. With just two people sitting across a table there was no getting out of having to keep a conversation about anything and everything going for half an hour at a time, then swapping to English for my intercambio partner's turn.

My teacher friend says pupils who learn fast is because he is a good teacher and those who don't are bad students.

I do know someone who did the kind of intensive Spanish course you are describing. She was the daughter of a Norwegian couple who owned a holiday home near to our old house, and did the course immediately prior to studying at the University of Granada. It seemed to work for her.

"How long to learn Spanish?" is a rather difficult one to answer, very important factors being the age of the pupil and the will to learn. When I was sent to run our office within an airline in Madrid I had no prior knowledge of Spanish, but thought I'd be keen to learn. I did learn a little, but was not really motivated after the 3rd month due to most of the Spanish personnel speaking fluent English, and interjecting my poor Spanish in meetings and elsewhere appeared cumbersome and non constructive - at least to the listeners. I was there only 16 months.
Afterwards I was re-assigned to Italy, fortunately after having completed a 3 week live-in Italian-speaking course which was brilliant - in Nottingham of all places! That was fortunate because from day one after arrival I was able to make myself understood. This was important on the aircraft constructors base where very few seemed to speak English - or were reluctant to. That was to my advantage and I was particularly motivated and within one year could get by reasonably well, certainly without being fluent. At home we spoke French and English. Our son at that time was 7 and in the English section of an international school, with no formal tuition in Italian. However all the kids whatever their nationality learnt/spoke Italian during recreation. In this manner and also particularly with a neighbour's child of similar age I'm convinced our son spoke near fluent Italian after 12 months - unlike myself, due no doubt to the significant age difference and he being far brighter than myself. Three years later I found myself re-allocated to Brazil where I had a tendency to confuse my very basic Portugese with my recently acquired Italian. Was only there for seven months, so that was fun!

This exactly mirrors our experience here in Budapest. In fact, if I know a conversation is likely, I have stopped using the Hungarian greetings (knowing that, almost immediately, I will have to point out that my Hungarian is very limited). So I use an obviously English greeting which saves a lot of time. If, unusually, they don't speak English then we stumble through, bizarrely, if I know they don't speak English then my Hungarian does improve, just a little (can't explain that!).

I have no experience of "seriously" learning a foreign language other than my high-school French, where my French teacher, on bumping into my mother in Sainsbury's shortly after the GCSE results were published, described my C grade as "a bloody miracle".

Beyond that, all I have ever done is pick up a handful of Italian phrases when visiting, which I have now entirely forgotten, and a few Mexican-Spanish phrases here in the US. I will admit I totally lack motivation, but I sincerely believe I also lack aptitude, and that may be linked to something I once read, that apparently the more competent you are in your mother tongue, so the more complex vocabulary, tenses, and other grammar you use (which I do), the harder you will find it to become fluent in another language, because your usage will always fall short of your usage of your mother tongue.

The answer to the question will vary according to:

• age of person
• motivation/reason for learning
• good/poor teacher
• good/poor textbooks

I'm 76. Memory not so good now, especially when faced with Basque here. But then I learnt Persian over 45 years ago & still speak it better than I do Basque.
I read Spanish newsapers daily & hear some TV & write certain new words down, but getting to use them & remember them is the trouble.
My Basque teachers here were quite good, but they were restricted by the method used, which was largely doing grammatical exercises. Easy teaching! I finished up being able to do the exercises without understanding!
I attended Spanish classes in Bilbao twice a week, from 2011-13 for 2 hours /class. They were good as was the textbook. I didn't bother taking the exam (C1) in the end.
So, all things considered, I'd agree that 6 years is about right.

Difficult to say, you don't just wake up one morning after 4-5 years and say "I've learned Spanish", it's a gradual improvement. But I guess 4-5 years is about right to reach a useful level.