How often should I take language lessons?

LanguageConvo Team -

Most of us are too busy these days. Here at LanguageConvo our young students learning a language have soccer practice, scouts, and homework to contend with. Our adult students have to take their children to soccer practice, scouts, and help with homework!

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So how often should we work on our foreign language skills?

The simple answer is of course "as much as possible!" And while that's a bit of an easy way out in terms of an answer, a good way to look at it may be...how much do you value learning a new language?

A mountain of research has shown that learning a foreign language provides cognitive benefits. If you're a parent, we imagine you want the best for your children, and having them learn a second language can help them in many ways throughout life: cognitive benefits, college admissions, future job prospects, we could list a million benefits.

Learning a foreign language as an adult also has been shown to provide cognitive benefits, can greatly enhance job prospects, salaries, and just makes travel more enjoyable!

So how much do you value learning a second language?

If your answer is "well when you put it that way, a lot!" we would of course have to agree 😊

That said, even if you highly value learning a foreign language, we know you don't have an unlimited amount of time to do so. Our guidelines are simple:

  1. If you have a very limited amount of time to devote, at a minimum spend 30 minutes each week in a one-on-one lesson with a professional teacher
  2. Budget and time allowing, 3 lessons per week is a good goal. Those can either be 30 minute or 1 hour long lessons; clearly, 1 hour long lessons will move you along much quicker
  3. If your choice is between, for example, a single 1 hour lesson each week and two 30 minute lessons we, strongly recommend two separate 30 minute lessons. A shorter time period between studying helps retention
  4. Many of our devoted students take 3 - 5 hours of lessons each week, and study on their own. Some students, particularly those studying for work or long-term travel purposes, take 10 hours of lessons with their teacher each week
  5. If your budget is limited, that's ok! Even as a beginner, a single 30 minute lesson each week (which with us here at LanguageConvo is very affordable) can help tremendously with everything from pronunciation, to getting you on the right learning track