Obviously time is a concern. People throw around all sorts of figures like "They say it takes seven years to become fluent in Chinese" (seen this one around), "you have to live in [country] for [this long] before you can speak [their language]." But honestly, that's such a subjective thing. I've heard people speak Chinese that have only been studying a year or two who speak exceedingly better than people that have been studying for nearly a decade. There are so many factors that affect the length (and effectiveness) of one's study: methods, opportunity to practice, diligence, the language itself, and on and on and on. I've been studying Chinese now for not quite three years, but have spent almost an entire year in a Chinese speaking country, thereby greatly accelerating the process.
However, many people do spend hours a day, five days a week for months or years in high school or college to study (or even major in) a specific language, and while this certainly provides structure and resources at your disposal, it's very arguably lacking a great deal, too. While many people find that it takes way too much time to learn a language (to any useful extent), we're going to try to accomplish (as much of) the task (as possible) in only two months. Again, that's only 1,440 hours. If the three of us are "average" in our sleeping habits, we will only be left with 960 waking hours to put to use, which is not quite six weeks' worth of actual time awake.
There are so many useful and very creative ways to use time effectively and efficiently in an effort to memorize vocabulary, phrases, etc., even while doing other things. Barry Farber's book How to Learn Any Language, while I question some of the material, has some very creative suggestions on how to use even three and five minute chunks of your day to be able to make progress just that much faster. In any case, we'll need to be as efficient as possible; a breakneck pace like the one we'll be on for this project would undoubtedly be hard to maintain for any real length of time. Again, though, it will serve as motivation as well as provide a strong foundation for when you inevitably will have to give it a rest or slow down. Building momentum early on will serve you well in the long run, and we aim to see just how far we can get in these 60 days.
There are so many useful and very creative ways to use time effectively and efficiently in an effort to memorize vocabulary, phrases, etc., even while doing other things. Barry Farber's book How to Learn Any Language, while I question some of the material, has some very creative suggestions on how to use even three and five minute chunks of your day to be able to make progress just that much faster. In any case, we'll need to be as efficient as possible; a breakneck pace like the one we'll be on for this project would undoubtedly be hard to maintain for any real length of time. Again, though, it will serve as motivation as well as provide a strong foundation for when you inevitably will have to give it a rest or slow down. Building momentum early on will serve you well in the long run, and we aim to see just how far we can get in these 60 days.
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