Study in China: How Long to be Fluent?

Just like the study of any other academic discipline, skill or language, studying Chinese will be slightly different for each individual. Some people will take to it very quickly, whilst others may always struggle to get the finer details right. No matter what your level and proficiency though, one of the most common questions asked is how long it will take to become fluent in Mandarin Chinese. The answer to this isn’t always simple, but there are some indicators that can help you to determine how long it might take you to become fluent. This article gives an overview of how much work, time and patience you will need during your study in China in order to get closer to the eventual goal of fluency in Chinese.

Well a lot depends on where you are going to study. No matter how much time you put into your study, if you aren’t spending time in China then it is going to take longer to become fluent. Just being in an environment where you need to speak Chinese on a daily basis could halve the time it takes you to become fluent. That is why it really pays to enrol on a China study abroad program and spend time learning Mandarin in somewhere like Beijing or Shanghai. Even if you can only do this for a few months each year, perhaps in the summer, this will certainly help your progress towards fluency.

Secondly, it is important to remember that there are different aspects of Chinese to learn – speaking, reading and writing. Let us take speaking first of all as a measure of fluency. Speaking Chinese is perhaps the simplest of the aspects of fluency, particularly if you work hard in your Chinese language lessons in order to master the tones of Mandarin. Studying full-time you can be up to a conversational level in a year or less and up to a business level in perhaps 2-3 years if you really work at it.

However, for reading and writing the time needed to gain fluency is much greater. Around 5,000 characters would be classed as highly fluent, but it may only be possible to learn a few characters a day and only then if you keep practising them. However, if you have a number of Mandarin language lessons a day then you should be able to expand your character knowledge over a number of years.

Overall though, it really can depend on the person. Some people are able to become fluent in speaking in just a year or so, whereas others may need much longer. However, to really feel comfortable speaking, reading and writing Chinese may take anything from five to ten years. However, this doesn’t mean you won’t see significant progress along the way. Once you are able to start holding reasonable conversations inside and outside of your Chinese language lessons, then you will be able to refine and grow from there.