How long does it take to learn a language?
- It only takes most students whose L1 is a Pasifika language approximately 2 years to become fairly competent in conversation in English.
- It often takes more than 7 years for bilingual students to reach the levels of proficiency in academic language expected for their English-speaking peers of the same age.
- People often underestimate the time and the amount of learning it takes to become fully proficient in academic language.
Teachers are often impressed by new learners of English who appear to learn to communicate with adults and their peers quite quickly. Often we attribute this quick progress to the student's age. Children are often surrounded by English-speaking peers at school, and this immersion situation can support the rapid development of conversational ability. In a such an environment, a child may develop conversational ability or surface fluency in an additional language in about 2 years. (See the inquiries What is academic language? and How many words should my students know? )
There is, however, a delay between this type of language-learning progress and students’ progress in using the language of content areas in their classrooms. This second language learning delay occurs when students are struggling to learn new language at the same time as learning new content. The effects of this delay continue to be felt as students progress through their schooling, with the academic and cognitive demands of the curriculum increasing with each succeeding year. Remember that even when EAL students are making steady progress, their English-speaking peers are progressing as well. As Wayne Thomas says: “For non-native speakers, the goal of proficiency equal to a native speaker is a moving target” (cited in Collier, 1995).
Cummins (2001) reports that teachers tend to overestimate EAL students’ language proficiency because of their conversational ability. Teachers in Canada considered that EAL students reached their English-speaking peers’ average for their age in speaking, listening, and reading after 2–3 years, and in writing, after 5–6 years. However, assessment data show that it generally takes longer than this.
United States researcher Virginia Collier (1995) looked at students’ achievement scores over a wide range of standardised tests across a number of subject areas and found compelling evidence of this second-language learning delay. Collier concludes:
In our studies we have found that in U.S. schools where all instruction is given through the second language (English), non-native speakers of English with no schooling in their first language take 7–11 years or more to reach age and grade-level norms of their native English-speaking peers. Immigrant students who have had 2–3 years of first language schooling in their home country before they come to the US take at least 5–7 years to reach typical native speaker performance.
Similar findings have been seen in New Zealand. Wylie, Thompson, and Lythe’s 2001 longitudinal study found that EAL learners who had entered New Zealand schools at age 5 were still behind their L1 peers in some respects when aged 10.
