How long to teach a Chinese young adult conversational English?

[archerships]

Assuming you were starting with a young (18-24) year old Chinese speaker of average intelligence awho spoke little or no English, how long do you think it would take to teach him/her conversational English? By conversational, I mean capable of reading a newspaper article in say, the New York Times, and carrying on an intelligent conversation with a native English speaker about the topic of the article.

Posted via email from crasch's posterous

Comments

[ipsafictura.livejournal.com]

I think the answer to this question varies wildly by the person's natural ear for languages. Some people pick up languages very quickly and others struggle with it. Memory factors more than intelligence here, I'm sure, along with some innate skills that are hard to measure. Also it would depend on whether you're talking about someone living in China and taking weekly lessons, or someone living in the US (or other English speaking country) and taking lessons as well as trying to muddle through their daily life. Immersion speeds up the pace of language acquisition considerably.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Assume that it was an immersive environment, and that they were taking lessons for 4 hours/day.

[ipsafictura.livejournal.com]

6 months to a year, depending on individual capacity, that would be my guess.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[slit.livejournal.com]

For speakers of European languages, who start learning English in mid-childhood in an immersion environment, it can take 7-8 years to be fluent by the standards of adult fluency. (They'll appear fluent sooner, because child-learners usually don't have accents, and our standards for what constitutes English language competency in a fourth-grader are low.)

Adults learn faster, but will probably have an accent. I've known Arabic-speakers who've done it in one year under the conditions you're describing, if they had a previous foundation in another European language or some prior study of English grammar, and were literate in their first language.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm not particularly concerned about an accent, provided that it's not so thick they can't be easily understood.

[adam--selene.livejournal.com]

BTW, there's a huge difference between learning a second language and learning a third+ language.

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

I'm wildly curious why you want to know this! Sounds exciting!

[joblessmusician.livejournal.com]

The secret army. He wants them to be well-educated, in addition to being merciless killers.