American Association of Teachers of German

Here are two "expected levels of speaking proficiency" as reported by ACTFL and the Foreign Service Institute.

Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers

People often ask: "How long will it take me to become proficient in ...?" This question is almost impossible to answer because a lot depends on the person's language learning ability, motivation, learning environment, intensity of instruction, and prior experience in learning foreign languages.

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the Department of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for languages based on the length of time it takes to achieve Professional Speaking (S3) and Reading Proficiency (R-3) in them. This is roughly equivalent to ACTFL Superior .

Keep in mind that students at FSI are almost 40 years old, are native speakers of English. and have a good aptitude for formal language study, plus knowledge of several other foreign languages. They study in small classes of no more than 6. Their schedule calls for 25 hours of class per week with 3-4 hours per day of directed self-study.

* Languages preceded by asterisks are typically somewhat more difficult for native English speakers to learn to speak and read than other languages in the same category.

You can now compare these figures to the average number of class hours per year in a college language course. A typical college year is 9 months or 36 weeks. A typical language course is 3-5 hours a week, or 108-180 hours per year plus preparation outside of class. It's no wonder that students who start a foreign language from scratch in college, rarely achieve high levels of proficiency. Unless they have done significant language work in high school, they will need to supplement their program with intensive summer schools and study abroad in order to achieve a high level of speaking proficiency.

The inevitable conclusion is that one must begin the study of a foreign language as early as possible and pursue it for many years in order to become proficient in it.

Full article: http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html

You can see that English is the most popular language of the Internet with Chinese in second place. The remaining 8 top languages are all below 10%. Of these, the three Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) account for 36% of Internet users. The six European languages (Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch) account for 28.7% of the total Internet population.

Top Ten Countries in Internet Use

Click here to learn which ten countries of the world have the highest number of Internet users.