Frequently asked questions
The questions I get most often, answered briefly.
⏱ About 3 min read
How long until I'm good?
Depends what "good" means to you. At a steady 1–2 hours a day, these were my milestones:
- 6 months — understand learner material by ear, read simple stories.
- 1–2 years — follow most of a film, read novels without constant lookups.
- 3 years onwards — comfortable in most situations.
Note that these hours count actual listening and reading, not time spent sitting in front of a book.
I'm starting from nothing. Where do I begin?
Read Introduction, then follow The first 30 days.
Alongside that, give 4–8 weeks to a basic grammar book. Do grammar and listening in parallel — don't wait until the grammar is finished to start listening.
Do I need to study grammar?
Yes, but only to the level of recognising it, and do it once. Details in How much grammar I actually learned.
Is Anki mandatory?
No. Anki is an accelerator, not a requirement.
If Anki makes you hate studying, drop it and read more. Reading produces repetition too — just more slowly.
Does this help with IELTS or TOEIC?
Only indirectly. A strong language base gives you a higher score, but exams also have their own test technique.
My advice: if you sit the exam within 3 months, drill past papers. If it's a year away, build the base first and drill later.
I listen constantly and still understand nothing
Almost certainly the material is too hard.
See Comprehensible input to bring the difficulty down into the 70–90% zone.
What if I know every word and still can't hear it?
That is a completely different problem from the one above, with a different fix.
The issue is sounds linking, dropping and weakening in fast speech. I wrote a separate piece about it: When you know the words but can't hear them.
How many words do I need to read a book?
About 8,000 word families to read novels without looking things up. The number is discouraging, but knowing it helps you pick books at the right level instead of blaming yourself.
Details in How many words is enough.
How do I know what level I'm at?
You don't need an exam. I use four self-tests run monthly, about half an hour — described in Measuring level and progress.
I'm doing everything and something still feels missing
Hold your last week up against the four pieces. Almost every time I felt stuck, the reason was one of those four sitting at zero.
When should I start writing?
Earlier than you think, and earlier than speaking. Three sentences a day is enough to start — details in Writing in English.
How many hours a day is enough?
In my experience the minimum to see progress is about 1 hour a day, consistently.
But "consistently" matters far more than "how many hours". One hour a day beats seven hours crammed into Sunday.
Should I learn several languages at once?
I'd say no, at least not in the first year. Splitting your time makes both of them slow, and it is easy to give up when you can't see progress anywhere.
Should I take a class?
A class helps with two things: discipline, and having someone correct your speaking and writing.
But it does not replace the listening and reading volume you have to accumulate yourself. Nobody can do that part for you.
On a tight budget, I'd save the money for one-to-one tutoring, a few sessions a month, right when you start speaking.