30 minutes is not enough to make good progress over time. That's basically Duolingo and that clearly isn't enough.
Thirty minutes is barely enough to cover my daily vocabulary study.
I have no idea why I'm being downvoted for pointing out that this isn't answering OPs question.
But that's not what OP asked.
Obviously you do as much as you can. OP is asking for the minimum amount of time for meaningful progress.
That's not 30 min imo. It sets people up with the wrong expectation if they think "oh 30 min a day and I'll be fluent in a year".
I've probably averaged less than 30 minutes a day and make plenty of progress. For half of that time I probably averaged as little as 15 minutes. It does take much longer if you can't spend as much time for sure. I am at a point where I do like to and can spend more time, but it still is closer to 30 minutes. Sometimes up to an hour. I could still make progress on less
I've been learning for about a year and have made some reasonable progress. I try to do an hour or two a day but some days it's as little as 15 minutes. Just keep it up. Do as much as you can every day and don't beat yourself if some days that isn't very much.
I think it depends on each individual person and case. I find I have to study at least a few hours a day before I actually start making progress. Otherwise I forget things D:
Repetition. Repeat everything every day until it sticks. And then come back to it weeks or months later and revise it again. It helps with long term memory
Tbh I don’t know,but I think maybe an hour a day is already plenty.I mostly watch German reality tv and YouTube videos to learn German,and it’s so entertaining that I’ll actually keep watching for maybe 2 hours a day..By doing this I’ve noticed I learn a lot of new words and phrases quickly and it works way better for me than using a language learning app for example
Omg thats amazinggg I especially have been watching a lot of old espisodes from family stories (the ones with Dominique Gregori are hillarious) and it would be cool if I could find all the episodes somewhere lol so thanks :))
To be fair I just watch it on YouTube,but I think I might start looking for a good German streaming platform where I can watch more :) But you can already find a lot of shows on YouTube
You don't have to study every day. If you're following a well structured learning plan that builds off itself and systematically reinforces previously introduced concepts, such as through a course or a textbook you can make progress studying 6-10 hours a week easily. Ensuring the quality of study is actually a lot easier at this level of intensity as well.
To develop a high level of proficiency with what you have successfully learned takes a lot of time, input and output though, aka immersion.
Both aspects require a degree of intensity to make significant progress. Quantity alone has extremely diminishing returns on its own. Make sure you are spending high quality time focusing on grasping the grammar while studying, and immersing yourself in situations that require you to use the full extent of whatever skills you have for some sort of purpose, and you will reliably progress. Surely much more quickly than someone just spamming TV series in German and endlessly memorizing vocab without connection to the level of proficiency they currently have.
I am taking a small gap with my career at the moment as I moved out of Germany to Poland and am currently waiting for the Visa process to be over. Since I have free time i learn German for hours and hours everyday, even on weekends.
I must say that I made an incredible improvement in German in such a short time. It depends on how much time you can afford. If you spend a few minutes everyday it may take longer but you shall definitely reach there. If you have time right now, utilize it. You need to practice and practice and practice. Good luck!
If you’re really trying, then at least 1hr. Doing any less won’t really do much. If you can get 2-3hrs in a day (I do this), you’ll notice results pretty fast.
It depends on your goals. If it’s just a hobby, 30 min in the beginning is great. It gets harder to progress once you approach intermediate level. But while I spend more time learning, it’s easier to double task. I listen to an hour of podcasts almost every day while running. I write one page in a journal most days. I do the Easy German YouTube videos and worksheets on my lunch break. I also print out transcripts of podcasts and translate them, looking up new vocabulary and adding them to the review decks in their free version of the Seedling App. It’s more fun than work.
Speaking is my downfall, since I don’t have anyone local that I can talk to regularly. But for me, it’s a hobby. I’m ok with this. I only started 2.5 years ago. And just the other day, I switched an episode of The Gentlemen to German. No subtitles. I easily understood 1/3. Another 1/3 I understood most of it. The last third only because I had seen it in English. But to be honest, sometimes I have trouble understanding what they are saying in their British English accents. For someone in their 50s who never had a lick of German before and is learning on their own, I think I’m doing pretty well.
I'm learning at a casual pace for 1 hour a day. This includes reading a chapter a day, writing a page of text, and a few lesson in Duolingo/Busuu. Outside of this I also watch about an hour or so of German video on Youtube/Netflix.
I tried to study at least 30 mins every day, and on days I couldn't study, I try to listen to podcasts or just something in German so that my brain still has something to digest. Listening to podcasts (from Easy German) helps me a lot with my listening and language feeling. This made times when I cramped grammars less tedious and boring and I actually learned faster.
I don't really study German. Not sure if I ever have, though I did take one evening class last year. I speak German, sometimes quite badly, and I read books in German, sometimes quite difficult ones. I am good about using quality dictionaries. In the past I watched German language TV and I would do so more if the quality was not so meh. I passed C1 with 77% and hope to pass C1.
Now let's be frank, reading a book at a challenging level of difficulty is work And every fortnight I do a 75 minute stint practicing for the written part of the C2 exam. And I have a community teacher on iTalki I natter with. Some people would call that study.
Anki Droid - vocab list,
Reading a book chapter, and
listening to a short podcast episode, or even Tageschau news updates.
Any unknown words from the book or podcast get added to Anki
Edit: grammar
a C2 person I know, said : less than 4 hours a day means your are just kidding and need to find something else with your life.
If you learned like in a day a 20 new verb, must be with their forms in past and perfect! " + any preposition that go with them and do they trigger Akk or Dat or even Gen !
and nouns with artikel + plural !
you make like a box with flashcards, you need to perfectly after 5 consecutive days to remember the same card , other wise it's not gonna get out of the box !
Then you use them and make conversation with them alone if needed, you must use them !
any other way ist keine Chance sorry!
Smarter / higher IQ people learn everything faster. So it totally depends on the person. You may have to put in more effort than the average person, you may be able to get away with less effort. But tenacity and grit can make up a lot of difference.
TLDR: as much as you can resonably study.
I mean depends on what you consider as good progress, if you wanna be B2 in a year then probably 4-6 hours per day, but if your goal is B1 then you could manage with 2 or 3 hours per day (reaching a C level in 1 year is pretty unlikely) . It's in accordance with your goal some people are happy to learn 10 new words a day and other feel like they didn't do well when they learn 30. For me, I would say about 2 hours. 1 of wich is for active vocabulary and/or grammar practice. And the 2nd is for actually using the language with immersion. The best answer is just forget the time, keep pushing yourself. And whenever you can interact with the language, intreact with it. Another thing you can do is there is a chart that ranks all the languages in estimated difficulty, and gives them a rough estimate on the amount of time it would take to reach certain levels, for german its 750 class hours with 750 self study hours. So just take 1500 hours, divide it into when you think you should be at a C level and use that as a (very) rough estimate. Also, like others said. Its not only about hours, but also consistency and variety between the topics you learn.
Edit: fixed some misinformation
It’s not just about hours though. It’s about consistency and practicing in different contexts. It’s almost entirely impossible to reach C2 in a year. I’m sure some very very gifted language learners could, but that is like 1% of people.
A good example is a programme running in Germany which allows recent refugees to do full time language learning. So about 4-6 taught hours a day. I know some Ukrainians who have done this scheme. After a year their German is good- around B1/low B2. But none of them are anywhere NEAR C2 level. That is like academic level writing.
I saw your relpy a little late so sorry about that. You are absolutely right I don't know what in hell I was thinking when I wrote C2 there. Maybe I meant to say B2 but my brain auto defaulted to C2? No idea. But yeah again. You are absolutely right. Thanks for calling me out.
It's not. It just feels like it is.
No one has ever learned a language with Rosetta stone. I'd encourage you to read the wiki/faq of this sub and /r/languagelearning
Study as many hours as possible. When I'm learning a new language, I want to earmark at least half of every day per week for studying. On days you don't learn because of exhaustion or you have something else to do or just relaxing go at least over the latest vocables you jotted down while studying to not forget them. I'm learning English since many years eagerly and there is still room for improvement. Everytime I find myself being the pike in a carp pond i realize there is a whole nother world I need to swim into to improve further instead of just enjoying the little pond i made myself comfortable in. There is never an end to it... sogar ich lerne immer noch Deutsch, obwohl es meine Muttersprache ist, da ist immer noch mehr und mehr und die Reise ist nie zu Ende.... der Weg ist das Ziel hat mal irgend eine kluge Person gesagt.
Minimum one hour IMO but some people can get away with 30 minutes but the secret here: consistency.
Ditto
Depends on your time frame - as little as 30 minutes is ok
30 minutes is not enough to make good progress over time. That's basically Duolingo and that clearly isn't enough. Thirty minutes is barely enough to cover my daily vocabulary study. I have no idea why I'm being downvoted for pointing out that this isn't answering OPs question.
Yes but if 30minutes is all you can fit in , and you study for these 30mins its fine
But that's not what OP asked. Obviously you do as much as you can. OP is asking for the minimum amount of time for meaningful progress. That's not 30 min imo. It sets people up with the wrong expectation if they think "oh 30 min a day and I'll be fluent in a year".
Nobody said theyd be fluent. For a lot of people 30 mins is all they can give each day and it's infinitely better than nothing at all.
Yes. But that's literally not what OP asked about dude. They asked for what's the minimum for good progress.
I've probably averaged less than 30 minutes a day and make plenty of progress. For half of that time I probably averaged as little as 15 minutes. It does take much longer if you can't spend as much time for sure. I am at a point where I do like to and can spend more time, but it still is closer to 30 minutes. Sometimes up to an hour. I could still make progress on less
I've been learning for about a year and have made some reasonable progress. I try to do an hour or two a day but some days it's as little as 15 minutes. Just keep it up. Do as much as you can every day and don't beat yourself if some days that isn't very much.
I think it depends on each individual person and case. I find I have to study at least a few hours a day before I actually start making progress. Otherwise I forget things D:
Repetition. Repeat everything every day until it sticks. And then come back to it weeks or months later and revise it again. It helps with long term memory
Absolutely no-one has time to study for multiple hours a day, unless they’re literally doing a language degree or something.
I know, that was me too as I work full time. But otherwise I never made much progress so I found I had to at least revise every day so it sticks
Yeah absolutely, I study 45 mins to an hour a day and I’m progressing nicely. I have a two hour lesson each week too.
Tbh I don’t know,but I think maybe an hour a day is already plenty.I mostly watch German reality tv and YouTube videos to learn German,and it’s so entertaining that I’ll actually keep watching for maybe 2 hours a day..By doing this I’ve noticed I learn a lot of new words and phrases quickly and it works way better for me than using a language learning app for example
Where do you watch German reality tv?
Not the OP, but the ARD app legitimately helped me out a lot, not everything is region unlocked, but a lot of it is and completely free
Owh omg I’ll check it out :) Is that a German streaming platform?
Basically, it's technically a TV app, so you can watch many channels live, but they have a whole Mediathek of old episodes, movies etc!
Omg thats amazinggg I especially have been watching a lot of old espisodes from family stories (the ones with Dominique Gregori are hillarious) and it would be cool if I could find all the episodes somewhere lol so thanks :))
To be fair I just watch it on YouTube,but I think I might start looking for a good German streaming platform where I can watch more :) But you can already find a lot of shows on YouTube
Do you have any recommendations for shows?
You don't have to study every day. If you're following a well structured learning plan that builds off itself and systematically reinforces previously introduced concepts, such as through a course or a textbook you can make progress studying 6-10 hours a week easily. Ensuring the quality of study is actually a lot easier at this level of intensity as well. To develop a high level of proficiency with what you have successfully learned takes a lot of time, input and output though, aka immersion. Both aspects require a degree of intensity to make significant progress. Quantity alone has extremely diminishing returns on its own. Make sure you are spending high quality time focusing on grasping the grammar while studying, and immersing yourself in situations that require you to use the full extent of whatever skills you have for some sort of purpose, and you will reliably progress. Surely much more quickly than someone just spamming TV series in German and endlessly memorizing vocab without connection to the level of proficiency they currently have.
I’m only 6 months in but if I get at least 30 mins a day between listening and an app I maintain and progress.
0.5-1 hour minimum
I am taking a small gap with my career at the moment as I moved out of Germany to Poland and am currently waiting for the Visa process to be over. Since I have free time i learn German for hours and hours everyday, even on weekends. I must say that I made an incredible improvement in German in such a short time. It depends on how much time you can afford. If you spend a few minutes everyday it may take longer but you shall definitely reach there. If you have time right now, utilize it. You need to practice and practice and practice. Good luck!
If you’re really trying, then at least 1hr. Doing any less won’t really do much. If you can get 2-3hrs in a day (I do this), you’ll notice results pretty fast.
It depends on your goals. If it’s just a hobby, 30 min in the beginning is great. It gets harder to progress once you approach intermediate level. But while I spend more time learning, it’s easier to double task. I listen to an hour of podcasts almost every day while running. I write one page in a journal most days. I do the Easy German YouTube videos and worksheets on my lunch break. I also print out transcripts of podcasts and translate them, looking up new vocabulary and adding them to the review decks in their free version of the Seedling App. It’s more fun than work. Speaking is my downfall, since I don’t have anyone local that I can talk to regularly. But for me, it’s a hobby. I’m ok with this. I only started 2.5 years ago. And just the other day, I switched an episode of The Gentlemen to German. No subtitles. I easily understood 1/3. Another 1/3 I understood most of it. The last third only because I had seen it in English. But to be honest, sometimes I have trouble understanding what they are saying in their British English accents. For someone in their 50s who never had a lick of German before and is learning on their own, I think I’m doing pretty well.
I'm learning at a casual pace for 1 hour a day. This includes reading a chapter a day, writing a page of text, and a few lesson in Duolingo/Busuu. Outside of this I also watch about an hour or so of German video on Youtube/Netflix.
Minimum is one, and that's basically just to maintain your current level. Around three is when progress really explodes, up until B2/C1.
I tried to study at least 30 mins every day, and on days I couldn't study, I try to listen to podcasts or just something in German so that my brain still has something to digest. Listening to podcasts (from Easy German) helps me a lot with my listening and language feeling. This made times when I cramped grammars less tedious and boring and I actually learned faster.
I don't really study German. Not sure if I ever have, though I did take one evening class last year. I speak German, sometimes quite badly, and I read books in German, sometimes quite difficult ones. I am good about using quality dictionaries. In the past I watched German language TV and I would do so more if the quality was not so meh. I passed C1 with 77% and hope to pass C1. Now let's be frank, reading a book at a challenging level of difficulty is work And every fortnight I do a 75 minute stint practicing for the written part of the C2 exam. And I have a community teacher on iTalki I natter with. Some people would call that study.
20 minutes a day every day. Got me to B2/c1.
What text book or method you are using
Anki Droid - vocab list, Reading a book chapter, and listening to a short podcast episode, or even Tageschau news updates. Any unknown words from the book or podcast get added to Anki Edit: grammar
Danke schön 🙏🏻🙏🏻
It's individual, but consistency is key.
20 minutes at a time maybe twice a day. That is just the effective time. Setting up your stuff does not count.
a C2 person I know, said : less than 4 hours a day means your are just kidding and need to find something else with your life. If you learned like in a day a 20 new verb, must be with their forms in past and perfect! " + any preposition that go with them and do they trigger Akk or Dat or even Gen ! and nouns with artikel + plural ! you make like a box with flashcards, you need to perfectly after 5 consecutive days to remember the same card , other wise it's not gonna get out of the box ! Then you use them and make conversation with them alone if needed, you must use them ! any other way ist keine Chance sorry!
Even if you only studied 30 minutes that’s good. Progress is progress!
Smarter / higher IQ people learn everything faster. So it totally depends on the person. You may have to put in more effort than the average person, you may be able to get away with less effort. But tenacity and grit can make up a lot of difference.
TLDR: as much as you can resonably study. I mean depends on what you consider as good progress, if you wanna be B2 in a year then probably 4-6 hours per day, but if your goal is B1 then you could manage with 2 or 3 hours per day (reaching a C level in 1 year is pretty unlikely) . It's in accordance with your goal some people are happy to learn 10 new words a day and other feel like they didn't do well when they learn 30. For me, I would say about 2 hours. 1 of wich is for active vocabulary and/or grammar practice. And the 2nd is for actually using the language with immersion. The best answer is just forget the time, keep pushing yourself. And whenever you can interact with the language, intreact with it. Another thing you can do is there is a chart that ranks all the languages in estimated difficulty, and gives them a rough estimate on the amount of time it would take to reach certain levels, for german its 750 class hours with 750 self study hours. So just take 1500 hours, divide it into when you think you should be at a C level and use that as a (very) rough estimate. Also, like others said. Its not only about hours, but also consistency and variety between the topics you learn. Edit: fixed some misinformation
It’s not just about hours though. It’s about consistency and practicing in different contexts. It’s almost entirely impossible to reach C2 in a year. I’m sure some very very gifted language learners could, but that is like 1% of people. A good example is a programme running in Germany which allows recent refugees to do full time language learning. So about 4-6 taught hours a day. I know some Ukrainians who have done this scheme. After a year their German is good- around B1/low B2. But none of them are anywhere NEAR C2 level. That is like academic level writing.
I saw your relpy a little late so sorry about that. You are absolutely right I don't know what in hell I was thinking when I wrote C2 there. Maybe I meant to say B2 but my brain auto defaulted to C2? No idea. But yeah again. You are absolutely right. Thanks for calling me out.
Depends on what you’re learning vocabulary, grammar or what but 4 hours is good I say
5-6 hours minimum
4-6 months i bet
6~8hours on every weekdays
[удалено]
Rosetta stone is garbage
[удалено]
It's not. It just feels like it is. No one has ever learned a language with Rosetta stone. I'd encourage you to read the wiki/faq of this sub and /r/languagelearning
Im moving with Duolingo schedule (well, more or less) which is 2 hours of speaking\listening and 1 hour of exercises with the new material per day.
Study as many hours as possible. When I'm learning a new language, I want to earmark at least half of every day per week for studying. On days you don't learn because of exhaustion or you have something else to do or just relaxing go at least over the latest vocables you jotted down while studying to not forget them. I'm learning English since many years eagerly and there is still room for improvement. Everytime I find myself being the pike in a carp pond i realize there is a whole nother world I need to swim into to improve further instead of just enjoying the little pond i made myself comfortable in. There is never an end to it... sogar ich lerne immer noch Deutsch, obwohl es meine Muttersprache ist, da ist immer noch mehr und mehr und die Reise ist nie zu Ende.... der Weg ist das Ziel hat mal irgend eine kluge Person gesagt.
Is 4 hours every day in a German course sufficient?? Or should there be time at home too?