How long does it take to learn English to A2, B1, B2 and C1?

Hours and months for each level

The hours are Cambridge English guided learning hours, counted from zero. The months are those hours divided by your daily study time and by 30.4 days in an average month, rounded to half a month.

The table assumes three things: you study every day without long breaks, you start from zero, and your hours are as focused as a structured course. If you did English at school, you probably don’t start from zero: take the free English vocabulary test and count from the level you have. Passive hours (a series in the background, scrolling a word list) count for less.

Short sessions are great for keeping the habit, but at 15 minutes a day C1 is about 8–9 years away. For B2 in under two years you need about 45 minutes every day.

What Cambridge and the FSI say

Cambridge English publishes approximate guided learning hours for each of its exams. They are cumulative, from beginner to the level of the exam, and Cambridge notes that they depend on your learning background and how intensively you study.

The US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) looks at the opposite direction. It measures how long native English speakers in full-time training (about 25 class hours a week plus self-study) need to reach professional working proficiency, roughly C1: about 24–30 weeks (600–750 class hours) for Italian, Portuguese, Spanish or French, about 36 weeks (about 900 hours) for German, about 44 weeks for Russian and 88 weeks for Arabic, Chinese, Japanese or Korean.

FSI has no figure for learning English, but the distance works both ways. Economists Chiswick and Miller (2005) turned this kind of difficulty score into a measure of how far a language is from English and found that immigrants whose native language is further from English usually speak it less well, other things being equal. For other target languages, see how long it takes to reach B1 and B2.

What changes the time depending on your native language

• Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish) share much of the everyday core: Haus and house, Wasser and water, kommen and come. Word order and many grammar patterns are close, so these speakers are usually among the fastest.
• Romance languages (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French) give you thousands of formal and academic words almost for free: information, possible, university. The traps are false friends (“actually” means “in fact”, not “currently”) and pronunciation.
• Slavic languages have no articles and a different tense system, so a/the and the present perfect need long practice. On the plus side, English has no noun cases and no grammatical gender.
• Distant languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese or Korean share little vocabulary and use a different script, so expect to need more than the Cambridge hours.

For everyone, three more things matter. Pronunciation: English spelling is a poor guide to sound, and sounds like th or the difference between ship and sheep are missing in many languages. Exposure: in countries that subtitle films and series rather than dub them, people hear English every day. And your starting point: a few years of school English can save you a hundred hours or more. The teacher’s handbook Learner English (Swan and Smith) describes typical problems for speakers of many languages if you want details for yours.

How many words each level needs

Vocabulary is the easiest part of a level to measure. A study of English learners by Milton and Alexiou (2009) links CEFR levels to the number of frequent words learners recognise:

• A2: 1,500–2,500 words
• B1: 2,750–3,250 words
• B2: 3,250–3,750 words
• C1: 3,750–4,500 words

So the big jump is between A2 and B1, about 1,000 new words, and after that roughly 500 more per level plus learning to use the words you already know. The Oxford 3000, the core list for A1–B2, is a good map. Details by level: A2, B1, B2 and C1; for English specifically, see how many words you need in English.

A realistic weekly plan

An example of about 5 hours a week that fits around work or school. Reviews come first every day, then one main focus:

That is 5¼ hours a week, or about 270 hours a year. From zero it gets you to B1 in about 15–18 months; from A2 to B1, which takes about 150–220 more hours, in about 7–10 months. Ten new words on weekdays add up to about 2,500 words a year. Reviews keep the words you have already paid for: how spaced repetition works.

How NewLexi helps

• Word sets for your goal. Ask in the chat for a set by topic, level or exam (for example B1 Preliminary or IELTS), and it arrives already split into categories.
• Words in context with audio and spaced repetition, so each word comes back when it is due.
• A daily plan of reviews, new words, a story and a dialogue, so you know what to do in your 30 or 45 minutes.
• Stories and dialogues written for your level with your words, with audio.
• Grammar lessons and exercises A1–C2, sentence building, writing practice with instant AI feedback and an AI chat for conversation.
• Import words by photo or from Anki and Quizlet, and Lock Screen widgets that show your words during the day.

NewLexi is for iPhone only. It is free on the App Store, with an optional Pro subscription.

FAQ

How long does it take to learn English to B1?

About 350–400 hours of study from zero, according to Cambridge English. At one hour a day that is 11.5–13 months, at 30 minutes a day about two years. If you already have A2, count about 150–220 more hours.

Can I learn English in a year?

To B1, yes, with about an hour every day from zero. B2 in a year needs about 1.5 hours a day (500–600 hours), and C1 about 2 hours a day, which is realistic only if English is your main occupation or you start from B1.

How many hours a day should I study English?

For steady progress, 30–60 minutes every day. Research on spaced practice shows that spreading the same time over many days works better than cramming, so 45 minutes daily beats 5 hours on Sunday. With a deadline, work back from the hours in the table above.

How long does it take to go from B1 to B2?

About 175 hours if you compare the middle of the Cambridge ranges (375 and 550 hours). At an hour a day that is about 6 months, at 30 minutes about a year.

Is English hard to learn?

It depends on your native language, but it is not one of the hardest. Its grammar is light (no noun cases, no grammatical gender, few verb endings), but spelling, pronunciation, phrasal verbs and the tense system take time. For speakers of Germanic and Romance languages it tends to be one of the easier languages; for speakers of Arabic, Chinese or Japanese it usually takes longer.

Sources

1. Cambridge English. Guided learning hours. support.cambridgeenglish.org/hc/en-gb/articles/202838506-Guided-learning-hours
2. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute. Foreign Language Training: language learning timelines. www.state.gov/national-foreign-affairs-training-center/foreign-language-training
3. Chiswick, B. R., & Miller, P. W. (2005). Linguistic distance: A quantitative measure of the distance between English and other languages. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 26(1), 1–11. doi.org/10.1080/14790710508668395
4. Milton, J., & Alexiou, T. (2009). Vocabulary size and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In B. Richards et al. (Eds.), Vocabulary Studies in First and Second Language Acquisition (pp. 194–211). Palgrave Macmillan. doi.org/10.1057/9780230242258_12
5. Swan, M., & Smith, B. (Eds.) (2001). Learner English: A teacher’s guide to interference and other problems (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. www.cambridge.org/core_title/gb/141331
6. Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. The Oxford 3000 and Oxford 5000. www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/about/wordlists/oxford3000-5000
7. Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
8. Council of Europe. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages