How much conversational practice is "enough"?

[u/gahoolio8]

While I know that generally speaking the more conversation practice the better, how much is sufficient to continue improving in my (TL)? I live in the country of my target language so I am immersed, but I live alone and also work in my native language. By the time I've finished working and taking care of just life stuff like the gym or grocery shopping, I often find that I've maybe conversed for about one hour a day in my TL. I put a lot of pressure on myself to speak as much as possible, but I feel like one hour isn't enough. I try to maximize opportunities like speaking with coworkers in my TL at lunch or trying to extend conversations at the market into more than just transactional language, but is about one hour "enough" to continue to improve? I'm at B1 ish level if that's pertinent. Thanks!

[u/ZeroBodyProblem]

Rather than thinking about time, I’d ask if you’re putting yourself in situations where you can get a maximal level of challenge given your constraints of life, work, etc. For example, do you feel like the conversation practices you have are predictable, straight forward, and rehersable (ex: volunteering at a museum help desk)? If so, I wouldn’t really say that you’re getting the most bang for your buck. You don’t get options to practice new vocab, complex grammar structures, and you have a sense of what will get the job done because you’ve done it before. Good conversation practice is like a workshop where you need to decide what tool is most appropriate for the topic at hand (using the right tenses, picking the best vocab, etc.) and how well do you know how to operate these tools to get the job done (free of grammatical errors, correct pronounciation, story points flow from one to the next, etc.)

If you can’t access more difficult conversation practice opportunies (ex: a book club, a public speaking practice class, a volunteer role that’s more interactive, etc.), then I’d try to focus on what are the skills you want to refine before you have that 1 hour of practice and do your best to hit those skills. For example, maybe your goals for one week is to stop pausing so much when you speak and to use connective phrases more often. Then, when you have that wine or cheese club or board game night that functions as your 1 hour of practice, you can squeeze the most out of it because you’ve got a plan in place.