[Otterly99]

I think it can be more useful to think in terms of hours of lessons rather than time spent learning. My partner is learning french right now at a private school and they have occasional classes (1h30 once a week), middle ground (2h twice a week) or intensive classes (4h five times a week). The program is always 70h, but you can either do it in a month, a semester or a year.

Having learned czech, I only had 1h30 a week and it took me 5 years to get to B1. I agree that the steps to A2 are much simpler because it focuses more on simple phrases and vocabulary, so you also learn it outside of the classes by reading descriptions, signs, menus. For B1 and up, you definitely need to practice by having deeper discussions with people or reading articles.

[delis-thumbs-7e]

You are completely right, and hours spent (in class) is how say US Foreign Service measures how quickly you get somewhat competent in a given language. There’s a lot of hoopla about just immersing yourself to the language and so on, but for most people achieving B1 means going to classes several hours every week for quite awhile.