How long does it take to learn French ?
We are going to talk about : how long does it take to learn the French language ? It requires a lot of patience to learn a new language and to be able to speak it well, maybe that is why many people is wondering how long does it take to feel comfortable at speaking a new language.
You need to set up a structure, a plan
You need to structure what you want to learn, you need to get a plan. To do so, you need to know how long it will take you to do this specific thing.
Do you have a first experience or not ?
If you already have learnt a foreign language, if you have an experience before that one, you are going to obviously learn quickly compare to someone who did not learn a foreign language before.
Do you want to learn it or it is a mandatory ?
It will also depend on : do you learn the French language because you really want to or because it is a mandatory (like someone at school who study the language because he has to, who studies the foreign language to get a good mark for an exam) ? If you really want to learn it, if you have a very good reason that explains that you really want to learn a foreign language (the French language in your case) the motivation is going to be more important. It is very different. If you want to learn your target language it is obvious that you are going to do it faster comapre to if you have to.
Do you learn the French language actively or passively ?
How do you learn your target language (in this case the French language (la langue française) ? Do you do it in a passive way ? Are you just listening to the language like you are listening to an MP3 file ? Do you do it actively or passively ? : learning vocabulary, the conjugation rules, the grammar points ? Do you learn on your own ? Do you take lessons with a French teacher ?
How many hours it takes to be able to speak French fluently ?
There are a lot of elements that are going to arbitrate how long it is going to take you to learn the French language. L’Alliance Française says that it takes about between 1060 to 1200 hours of French courses to be able to speak fluently the French language. If you learn passively, I mean if you are listening to the French language while doing something else : watching movies, if you are listening to songs,... If you could spend 2 hours a day to study the French language and do it everyday, it is going to take about 18 months to be able to speak fluently your target language. It is not so long. Many people are watching TV every day for a long time, how many hours do they spend every day doing this ? So, why not replacing the time you are watching TV by studying your target language (in you case the French language).
A1 Level
L’Alliance Française says that it takes about between 60 and 100 hours of learning the language to reach the A1 level, which is the first level of learning, which is the level for the beginners.
A2 Level
After it takes about 100 hours to complete the next level, the A2 level.
B1 Level
After that there is the B1 level which is the lower intermediate level.
B2 Level
Once you are done with the B1 level it is going to take you between 200 and 250 hours to be done with the B2 level and reach the C1 one.
C1 Level
The C1 level is the advanced level, it takes about 250 hours to 300 hours of studying to complete this level.
Finally
Finally when you add the last level it will take about 250 hours of studying to become fluent at speaking the French language and be able to say whatever you want, to talk about whatever you want, your favourite topics,... to understand everything. For the first levels it requires less time. At the beginning, your progression is faster compare to when you are studying the next levels : the intermediate and advanced levels. When you will be at this levels you will need to spend more time to study because the conjugation rules, the grammar points, the vocabulary and all the others rules are a little bit more difficult to print in your mind.