400 Hours

Since we started Little Lorikeets International in 2013, out of interest I have been collecting and detailing all the hours that the students have spent in an all English environment.

Over the years I started noticing a pattern and trend. They say that it takes over 4000 hours to be proficient in a language, and that is true from our experience in our kindergarten and daycare. We also noticed the students started to understand what was being said to them and also started to speak English back to us, this all started happening around 400 hours in the school. Which is around 3~4 months in an immersive English school.

Of course some children have a natural interest in language and start sooner, also children who start English at an older age who have the desire to speak will start doing so earlier. All that we noticed is that a two year old who has no real interest in learning another language starts to understand and speak around the 400 hour mark.

So if you think about it, with a normal English education in Japan which consists of one to two hours a week it is going to take a long time to build up to 400 hours.

Still it is interesting to see that from ZERO English to starting to speak and understand, it takes around 400 hours averagely.

So What does this mean… It means that you should definitely want to get your children on their way to 4000 hours as soon as possible and you want to get a foundation of 400 hours laid down and fast.

And you want to get it laid down before other activities such as cram school, swimming, music lessons take over their precious time.