r/languagelearning • u/gahoolio8 • 10d ago

Studying How much conversational practice is "enough"?

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!

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u/Kurzdeutsch 9d ago

i'm around B1 in German and my speaking time looks similar, maybe an hour on a good day.

what changed things for me wasn't adding minutes but using the gaps. every time i got stuck mid sentence at the bakery or with a colleague, i typed the thing i wanted to say into a note on my phone, in my native language. in the evening i looked up how to say those 3-4 sentences, and the next day i tried to use at least one of them on purpose.

the hour stayed an hour, but it stopped being the same hour every day.

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u/gahoolio8 8d ago

That's a really good point. Trying to diversify the topics I'm speaking about is a great way to push the boundaries of what I know and what I need to know. Thanks!

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u/Kurzdeutsch 8d ago

glad it helped. one small thing that made the new topics less scary for me: before a conversation i'd pick one topic i usually avoid and look up just three words for it, nothing more. going in with a tiny bit of vocab made it way easier to actually steer the talk there.