There is some discussion on another thread about the meaning of the different levels in the CEFR. It seems to me easier to talk about

1) Basic ability to communicate, to speak and understand, with difficulty, dealing with a limited range of familiar subjects..
2) The ability to discuss and understand comfortably, dealing with most subjects. In other words fluency.
3) Mastery, good command of vocabulary, and few mistakes if any.

How long do you think it takes to get from scratch to 1), from 1) to 2) ,and from 2) to 3)?

I often feel that the CEFR definitions somehow don't apply to Chinese. From what I have learned over the past four years I must be somewhere in C1 territory, at least when it comes to confidence and fluency of output. I feel I can discuss basically any topic that comes to mind with my friends and colleagues.

But here is the big BUT: Comprehension-wise I feel I am still below a language like Spanish in which I would certainly struggle much more to speak compared to Chinese. When I switch on the TV here in China or listen to natives talk among themselves, sometimes I still may find myself almost completely lost. This does not happen to me in Spanish (which is by the way the weakest of my other foreign languages).

I remember I shared some audio content downloaded from the CCTV website and Steve, a self admitted low C1 in Chinese said he understood very little (which was the same for me). Now, how can we regard a language a strong language if we struggle with ususal media content like news bulletins that we would have little issues to understand in weaker languages?

I am always amazed at the stream of new words and idioms even after four years of intensive study of Chinese. I also think that the fuzzy, compact and ambiguous nature of Chinese causes it to have less redundancies and robustness for "encoding information". Still I hope the day will come that I truly understand virtually everything with ease like I do in many other foreign languages that I have learned with much less time put into learning them.

Another thing I should add is that lately I have spent much more time reading than listening, and that part takes up a lot of time in Chinese. It is possible to fight one's way through a Chinese text with the help of software dictionaries already at an early stage but this is not a pleasant experience. I want to read quicker and with less effort and in Chinese that certainly takes a lot of practice.

Maybe you are too hard on yourself. Do you think native Mandarin speakers listen to Mandarin the same way as Germans listen to German? It seems to me that some languages require more context no matter who is listening.

This is a very intersting point, maybe the process of listening and information processing is different in Chinese, and they have just become used to it as they grow up and live in that language. A Chinese will readily admit that he also believes that their language is somewhat fuzzy and context is much more important that in other languages. Sometimes I wish I were a linguist.

Dont' make too much of this "Steve listened and said he understood very little" thing. In fact I understand Chinese quite well. But if you throw something at me without context, I may just say " I don't understand what they are saying" when in fact if I concentrate and am given the time to catch up with the context, I understand quite well. I have regularly appeared on television panel discussions and have no trouble following my fellow panelists, as well as responding to the people who phone in.

The same would happen to me in Spanish, and other languages. Perhaps not in French, but even then, you need a few seconds to shift gears.

If we forget the CEFR and just look at the levels that I described in my opening post,

1) Basic ability to communicate, to speak and understand, with difficulty, dealing with a limited range of familiar subjects..
2) The ability to discuss and understand comfortably, dealing with most subjects. In other words fluency.
3) Mastery, good command of vocabulary, and few mistakes if any.

I think that level 1) is the easiest to attain, we get there faster, and we get a great sense of achievement. Getting to 2) and 3) is much more difficult, and takes much longer. We just need a lot of exposure to get there.

I also think the beginner stage is the most rewarding and pleasureable because, for me , that struggle at the start is like being thrown into a pool and thrashing about trying to catch your stroke, once you connect with the water the pleasure seems much lower than at first.

I am at the low-intermediate stage of Italian and find it quite unenjoyable because I'm past the struggle but I still have difficulty reading and listening to books I find pleasurable.

So I have started German and Spanish to feel that immediate struggle. I think I'll just do this with many languages unless I really need to use one for life in someway, I feel the reward is much higher.

This is why I think the time to go from 2) - 3) would take years, simply because my motivation is lower and thus my input wains. I went from 2 hours a day to about 15 mins but when I switched to another language my motivation shot back up to 2 hours a day.

Friedemann how many hours roughly have you put into chinese?

Difficult to say, maybe two to three hours a day for 18 months while still in Germany. Since October 2009 I am living in China and it is really difficult to say how much time I put in because it is essentially an immersion environment.

Friedemann - Sounds like you are really dedicated. Are you continuing with lessons? I find lessons is a good way to practice my weaknesses.

Marianne,

I only had formal lessons back in Germany for maybe one third of the time, here in China I have never had a teacher. Whenever I have questions I ask colleagues so I don't think I really need a teacher.

Dedicated? I guess I am more committed than the average Chinese learner, but committment and patience is the only road to fluency in Chinese, I'm afraid, well at least for me.

Friedemann - A teacher can be great for practising cheng yu and other colloquialisms on. They will force you to provide your own examples and give you other examples. Just a thought.

How about adding tenacity and perseverance and a good deal of pig-headedness to those :-)
I think if one wants to improve further one definitely needs all of these qualites and other self-torturing devices.

"committment and patience is the only road to fluency in Chinese"

Think about irish polyglot's definition. He is probably three times fluent by now....

I will try to answer Steve's question without reading others' answers. (Sorry, I will read them later.)

"2) The ability to discuss and understand comfortably, dealing with most subjects. In other words fluency. "

My answer
I don't know what "most subjects" mean.
I don't know what is the difference between 2) (=fluency) and 3) (=mastery, few mistakes with a rich vocaburary). It seems that these abilities are almost the same.

To tell the truth, I cannot discuss and understand comfortably dealing with unfamiliar subjects even in my mother tongue.

I will talk about the levels of mother tongues.
Based on what one has experienced in life, each one is different. Each one has a different level of speaking fluently or of understanding. Someone picks up certain words or phrases to understand what the other says, the other picks up different ones ...

When it comes to foreign languages, it will take many years from 1) to 2) or 3). If we have to do other things apart from learning lanuages, it will take many many years to master the target languages.

And do you feel the pay off is worth the effort?

In other words, there is no end to learn languages, so I think realizing a certain level is a motivation for learning foreign language.

For what it is worth I see the time involved as the following.

1) Basic ability to communicate, to speak and understand, with difficulty, dealing with a limited range of familiar subjects..
If this is the goal, it can be achieved in 1-3 months of full time study in an immersion setting, depending on the difficulty of the language. If ,as as my case, we study an hour or so a day, and the goal is first to understand the language, this stage can be delayed for 6 months to a year or more.

2) The ability to discuss and understand comfortably, dealing with most subjects. In other words fluency.
This stage can be reached with 6-18 months of full time study, and can take years of part time study, again depending on the language.

3) Mastery, good command of vocabulary, and few mistakes if any.
This stage requires years of using the language, and continued efforts to acquire vocabulary and to notice things in the language.

I think most subjects means most conversations amongst friends, and most subjects on TV, radio etc..We understand and can communicate, more or less regardless of the subject as long as it is not some esoteric specialist field.

There is a difference between fluency, my 2) above, which corresponds to B2 in the CEFR, in other words, mistakes and a somewhat limited vocabulary, forcing us to tailor what we say to the words that we can use, and true mastery as with the example of that fellow Vaughan who owned language schools in Spain.