Speaking practice, in public figures

Findings

The U.S. Department of State’s National Foreign Affairs Training Center says a typical language-training week is 23 hours in class and 17 hours of self-study.

Those timelines are the time usually expected to reach an integrated score of 3 in speaking and listening on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale. The same page says the actual time can vary with ability, prior language learning, and time in the classroom.

Category I is published as 24 to 30 weeks, or 552 to 690 class hours. Spanish and French are listed at 30 weeks, which is 690 class hours at 23 a week. Portuguese and Italian are listed at 24 weeks, which is 552 class hours.

German is in Category II, published as about 36 weeks and 828 class hours. Polish is in Category III, published as about 44 weeks and 1,012 class hours. The Category III list is not exhaustive.

Arabic and Japanese are in Category IV, published as 88 weeks and 2,200 class hours. That class-hour total is the figure printed on the page. It is not 88 times 23.

These totals are class time toward that professional score. They are not a count of when a five-minute conversation starts, and they do not say why an adult skips speaking.

Paseo has not surveyed learners for this page. There is no sample size, no median, and no finding here about why people skip speaking.

Where the numbers come from

Figures were read from the National Foreign Affairs Training Center page on 31 October 2026. Class hours for Categories I, II, and III on this page are the listed weeks times 23, and those products match the totals printed for the categories. Category IV uses the printed total of 2,200 class hours.

The source is the National Foreign Affairs Training Center’s Foreign Language Training page, retrieved 31 October 2026. This page did not re-measure those classes.

What this revision does not measure: minutes until a first conversation, the reasons adults skip speaking, or anything from Paseo’s waitlist. There is no survey sample to show. When one exists, it will be added on this same address, with the sample size and the date.

A planning range, not a finding

For a planning range only, a five-minute unscripted exchange is counted as 23 hours of speaking, multiplied by the language’s listed class hours and divided by 552, the floor of Category I. When a language sits inside Category I and above that floor, the range runs from 23 hours up to that scaled figure. Languages published as a single class-hour total get a single figure. Listening and flashcards are not counted. This is not an ILR milestone, and it is not a survey result.

At 20 minutes of speaking, 5 days a week, the planning range for Spanish is 14 to 17 weeks.

Matching the 690 class hours listed for Spanish takes 414 weeks at this pace.

Listening and flashcards are not counted.

The worked example is Spanish, 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week, starting from zero hours spoken. Run other inputs on the conversation hours calculator.

Languages on this page

The State Department list is longer. These are the rows Paseo teaches, copied from that page. English is absent because the list is for English speakers.

Use it while you talk

• How to learn Spanish
• Latin American Spanish
• How to learn Portuguese
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Conversation hours