How many hours of language sessions should I take?

If you are looking to start or continue learning another language, one of the first questions you will need to wrestle with is that of how much time you can and should commit to the endeavor.

People wanting to take on the challenge of building or strengthening relationships cross-culturally in another language are almost always busy people. They are often in the midst of big life changes such as new jobs or studies, living in new countries, starting new businesses, even being a part of new families. Or even if these things are not new, they will always be demanding! All of these things take a lot of time! It is rare that anyone seeking to learn a new language has a completely free schedule with no other demands on their time.

So your desire to commit time and energy to relating better with people cross-culturally must be strong if you are looking to make sacrifices in your other responsibilities to make progress in this area. Welcome! We love helping motivated learners reach these goals especially in language and culture. We are excited to help you make the most of your time!

How much time does it take to learn a language?

Most people underestimate the amount of time required to communicate effectively in a new language. What it means to be "proficient" may vary from person to person but in general, studies show that "proficiency" often takes 1-5 years of daily, immersive study depending on the difficulty of the language. The concept of "fluency" in another language is of course even harder to attain than proficiency. Another study showed that on average it takes 17 years to become fluent in another language. Yes- that is correct. Seventeen years!!

All methods aside, the number one indicator of success in language learning is: time spent learning the language.

While most people have hopes of reaching whatever level is required to build deep relationships in another language, very few people are willing to put in the time required to really reach advanced levels of proficiency in another langua-cultural world. Often it is an issue of underestimating how much time it takes to grow and unfortunately it can also be an issue of not protecting the time required.

How is the GPA Approach helpful in maximizing time learning language?

The Growing Participator Approach (GPA) is an approach to entering humbly into another langua-cultural world and growing as a participator in their practices which includes understanding their language and culture. The method breaks the language/culture learning process into 6 Phases full of different activities and techniques in each phase to make the most of your learning at that stage. (Check out this blog to see a list of benchmarks of skills you will reach in each of the 6 phases in Hindi). The phases have different purposes and take different amounts of time to complete.

Here is a brief summary of each phase in the GPA:

• Phase 1: 100 Hours of Special-growth Participation Sessions. Connect with someone of another langua-cultural world through playing games.

• Phase 2: 150 Hours of Special-growth Participation Sessions. Emerge in another langua-cultural world through wordless picture books.

• Phase 3: 250 Hours of Special-growth Participation Sessions. Become someone locals can get to know through listening to stories in your target language that you already know in your home language.

• Phase 4: 500 Hours of Special-growth Participation Sessions. Build deep personal relationships with locals through hearing their life stories and learning more deeply about their culture.

• Phase 5: 500 Hours of Special-growth Participation Sessions. Widen your understanding of local life and discourses by listening to native speakers talk to each other.

• Phase 6: Years and years and years of Lifestyle Participation in the Host World. In order to keep growing in your ability to participate in another langua-cultural world, you will need to commit to years and years of being exposed to lots and lots of speech that you understand in your every-day life.

In Total: 1500 Hours of Special Growth Participation Sessions and Years and Years of Lifestyle Participation after that are what it takes to reach fluency in another language.

What is the difference between Special Growth Participation Sessions and Lifestyle Participation?

There are some people who think that just being in a new place where people speak a different language will lead to you being able to understand and speak that language fluently yourself. Unfortunately, we don't grow in understanding another language if we can't understand anything we are hearing. We grow through massive comprehensible input- listening to tons of language that you fully understand. It is by understanding new words and sounds and structures that our brain makes connections and grows.

Maximizing time in language sessions where your Nurturer/mentor adapts learning activities exactly to your growth zone is so crucial to really maximizing growth in a new language. Lifestyle participation is still super important for growing in understanding the culture, meeting people, and practicing what you are learning. But you just should not expect it to really help you learn more of the local language until you have a strong base of understanding a lot of speech already in that language. Until that foundation has been built, you may be able to say a few things and understand a few things, but most of what you hear will still be incomprehensible- "a wall of noise" to you- and will not actually help you grow.

Doing the activities that are designed for your level where you can reach 100% understanding of all you hear through playing games, using visuals, hearing simplified stories, etc.- this is called special growth participation. These activities are tailored to give you exposure to 8-10 new words per hour and strengthen tons of speech you are growing to understand better and better.

So main point here is to say- our ideal recommendation is doing 20 hours/week of full time special-growth participation sessions with a Nurturer for the first 1500 hours of language learning. This comes out to 4 hours/day, 5 days per week. Accounting for some time needed for vacations and travel throughout, these 1500 hours (Phases 1-5) can be completed within 2 years.

How many weeks does it take to finish each Phase of GPA at a full time (20 hours/week) pace?

• Phase 1: 5 weeks

• Phase 2: 8 weeks

• Phase 3: 16 weeks

• Phase 4: 6 months

• Phase 5: 6 months

• Phase 6: Years and years and years

We believe that you will maximize your momentum and your growth at this rate and that lifestyle participation- being out and about in the community- needs to happen still, but it needs to happen on top of this 20 hours/week of time with a Nurturer. Time in specialized growth participation sessions should not be lessened in the thinking that you should save time for lifestyle participation. By giving yourself to special-growth participation with a Nurturer for 2 years, you set yourself up with a strong foundation upon which you will continue to grow for years and years and years without special-growth participation and through lifestyle participation alone. This is called Phase 6.

Stopping special-growth participation sessions in any phase before Phase 6 means you will "plateau" in that phase and your learning/growth will level out at whatever level you stopped.

What does it mean to "Plateau" in language learning?

A plateau is a physical feature that is relatively level and flat. To "plateau" in language learning means that your understanding and speaking ability have "leveled-out" and reached a state of little or no change after a period of activity or progress.

When you are participating in special-growth participation sessions (for example- GPA Phases 1-5), your ability to understand and speak another language- your ability to participate in another langua-cultural world- will be growing. When you stop, you may for a short while feel like you are still improving a bit as you grow in confidence in speaking the words you already know. However, pretty soon, you will notice that you aren't really growing beyond the point where you stopped having your regular sessions.

For some people, you know the level or "plateau" that is sufficient for your needs in another language. Maybe you don't desire to be fully proficient or fluent. Or maybe you do! Determining who you want to be in your new language is a crucial consideration for deciding how much time to commit to learning that language- or in GPA terms- growing your participation in another langua-cultural world.

Who do you want to be in your new language?

Rather than jumping right into how many hours you should commit to learning your new target language, it is important to consider who you want to be in that new language. Specifically- how do you want local people who live in that new langua-cultural world to see you?

The point at which you stop your regular special-growth participation sessions will determine where you "plateau" in your growth in another language. Your abilities in understanding and speaking at that point will determine how local people see you and how well they can interact with you.

• If you stop learning after Phase 1 (100 hour commitment/ 5 weeks) who will you be? You won't interact in host speech very much- mostly memorized expressions or single words. Host people will feel like you like them, as most foreigners don't bother to learn any of their words.

• If you stop learning after Phase 2 (250 hour commitment for Phase 1 and 2/ 13 weeks) who will you be? You will speak "brokenly." You will have relationships with host people, but will not converse about much. Host people will likely find you "cute" or "sweet" and will enjoy interacting with you (for awhile).

• If you stop learning after Phase 3 (500 hour commitment for Phases 1-3/ 6 months) who will you be? You will talk a lot and sound pretty fluent. You can be able to teach simply on topics of interest to you, especially if you prepare well. When host people are talking among themselves about what you said, you won't be able to understand them very well. You will likely have difficulty responding to challenges people make to your beliefs. People will likely enjoy you, but communicating with you will be tiring for people.

• If you stop learning after Phase 4 (1000 hour commitment for Phases 1-4 / 1 year) who will you be? As host people deal with you, they will be able to sense that you really understand them. You will be able to go deep with individuals and understand some of what people say to one another. You can often do well at answering challenges to what you believe. People are able to share with you from the depths of their heart and feel understood.

• If you stop learning during Phase 5 (1 to 1.5 years) who will you be? You will be seen as "one of us" by host people- almost. You will be able to understand much of what people say to one another and have a deep understanding of what kinds of things people talk about. Besides just being able to easily communicate with you, people will feel like you really understand deeply their people and their culture.

• If you stop learning after Phase 5 (1500 hour commitment for Phases 1-5/ 1.5 years of total study time or more likely 2 years accounting for some vacations and time off in between) who will you be? Here is the exciting thing...

If you can commit to 1.5-2 years of full time learning through special growth sessions of Phases 1-5, your growth will not plateau!

The beauty of Phase 6 of GPA

You are said to be in Phase 6 of a new language if:

1) you are hearing lots of speech in your target language and

2) you are understanding most of what you hear.

If you have completed 1.5-2 years of special growth participation GPA Phase 1-5 sessions, you will understand most of what you hear around you. You will then want to make sure that outside of your full time special growth participation, you have been growing your participation in host culture more and more so that you are surrounded by host speech in your daily life.

And then watch out! Your language and learning and participation in host culture will not plateau even though you stop meeting with a Nurturer or mentor for special growth sessions. You will continue to grow and grow because you are hearing lots of speech in every day life and you are understanding most of what you hear.

So now it is time to set your goals and do the math!

Based on the descriptions above, you can decide who you want to be in your target language and then do the math to figure out how many hours you should take and how long it will take!

For most languages, 1500 hours of special growth participation gets you to Phase 6. (We think that for Hindi/Urdu it is probably a bit more than this due to the diversity of dialects and mix of languages that occur in Hindi Urdu).

We strongly recommend doing 20 hours per week, if at all possible.

• If you can do all of Phases 1-5 at this full time rate, you will finish your special growth participation sessions in 1.5-2 years.

The advantage of reaching Phase 6 as early as possible is that you will maximize the time of your life that your language and participation will grow in breadth and depth through lifestyle participation alone.

What if you cannot sustain 20 hours per week for all of Phases 1-5?

As we said earlier, it is the norm and not the exception to have competing demands on your time when taking on the endeavor of learning another language. Protecting 20 hours per week for 1.5 to 2 years -while perhaps ideal- is not always possible. That's okay! You will continue to make progress and avoid a plateau as long as you continue to take some special growth participation, even if it is not the full time rate. Your challenge will just be to continue to prioritize this time in your schedule for a few years- whatever amount of time your schedule allows.

• If you can do 20 hours/week for Phases 1-3 and then cut back to 10 hours/week for Phases 4 and 5, you can reach Phase 6 in 2.5-3 years.

• If you can do 20 hours/week for Phases 1-3 and then cut back to 10 hours/week for Phase 4 and cut back further to 5 hours/week for Phase 5, you can reach Phase 6 in 3.5-4 years.

We really encourage people to consider at least trying to do Phases 1-3 at 20 hours/week. These are the phases where it just takes a lot of effort to understand or say anything. In these phases, you really just feel like a baby. It can be a crawl to get through these phases. By really investing 6 months full time in Phases 1-3, you lay a very very solid foundation from which to continue learning at a significantly slower pace if needed and yet increasing the likelihood of becoming the person in your target language that you want to be.

So what if I really can only manage to do 10 hours/week or fewer, but I still want to start?

That is okay! You can absolutely still make progress as long as you continue to take special growth participation. Keeping motivated will be your biggest challenge. At 10 hours/week you will complete:

• Phases 1-3 in 1 year

• Phase 4 in a second year

• Phase 5 in a third year

If we are being honest, we have rarely seen anyone who starts at 10 hours/week increase their hours to more hours/week in later phases. We have also rarely seen anyone continue at a pace of 10 hours/week for three years straight. More often than not, motivated people who start at 10 hours/week make it at most into Phase 3 or maybe early Phase 4 and then discontinue special growth participation sessions. But if we re-look at who you will be at this point:

You will talk a lot and sound pretty fluent. You can be able to teach simply on topics of interest to you, especially if you prepare well. When host people are talking among themselves about what you said, you won't be able to understand them very well. You will likely have difficulty responding to challenges people make to your beliefs. People will likely enjoy you, but communicating with you will be tiring for people.

That's really amazing! We of course want to encourage you to go as far and as deep- in learning to participate in your target language and the world associated with it- as far as you want to go! So we compiled this blog (all adapted from information from the Growing Participator Approach materials) to help just be realistic and open about how much time it takes to be what kind of person in another language.

So yes, it is absolutely possible to make it to Phase 6 at a rate of 10 hours/week! It will just take extended commitment to that pace over a few years. So committing your mind to keep specialized growth sessions a priority for a long time will help you keep on track.

You can even reach Phase 6 at 2 hours/week...it would just take 16 years assuming you don't give up well before then due to the slow progress :)

No matter who you want to be, we are eager to support you in that endeavor!

What if I am already plateaued somewhere between Phases 1-5 and I want to grow again?

There is a principle called the 100/300 Hour Rule. This basically states that in order for host people to see that you have grown, it takes 100 hours of special growth participation in lower phases and about 300 hours of special growth participation in higher phases.

So perhaps you aren't sure you are ready to set a goal of reaching Phase 6, but you just want to get off the current plateau you are on and grow again. We recommend finding and committing 100 hours to time with a Nurturer if you are in Phases 1-3 in order to see the growth and change you are hoping for. And for Phases 4 and 5, committing 300 hours of time with a mentor/ Nurturer will help you see that change.

So again, you can let these estimates help you to set a goal for who you want to be and then do the math and then commit it to your schedule.

• 100 hours=

  • 1.5 months at 20 hours/week

  • 2.5 months at 10 hours/week

  • 4.5 months at 5 hours/week

• 300 hours=

  • 3.5 months at 20 hours/week

  • 6.5 months at 10 hours/week

  • 13.5 months at 5 hours/week

Conclusion

We strongly recommend committing 20 hours/week to special growth participation sessions for as long as you can in order to maximize your momentum towards becoming the person you want to be in your target language. But no matter how much time you can commit, it all boils down to remaining committed to putting in the time.

At Launch India, we love the Growing Participation Approach and all that it stands for. It is a full framework for how to enter humbly into another langua-cultural world. We have seen it help people reach their goals of connecting with and loving people in a new language and culture. For that reason we are passionate about using it in our program to help people reach their goals. It is by no means the only way to approach entering another language and cultural world- it is just our personal favorite!

If you would like to hear more about the approach or talk through whatever considerations you are personally making as you decide how much time to commit- do not hesitate to reach out! We would be delighted to listen and help you decide if and how Launch India is a good fit for you!