Learn Japanese online with a private tutor

How long does Japanese actually take?

The US Foreign Service Institute has been timing this for decades, and the figure everyone quotes is only half of what they publish. FSI puts Japanese at 88 weeks — 2200 classroom hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency. But FSI also states that a typical week is 23 hours in class and 17 hours of self-study, so the real total is closer to 3696 hours of work. The pace below divides that full total rather than the classroom half, which is why these numbers are longer than the ones you have seen elsewhere:

Worth saying plainly: that figure is for full professional proficiency, which is a much higher bar than most learners need. Holding a real conversation in Japanese usually arrives at somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the way in.

Kinds of Japanese lesson

Teachers list what they specialise in, so you can match on purpose rather than on price alone.

• Japanese tutors for beginners

  Teachers who work with absolute beginners every day and can run a first Japanese lesson entirely in a language you share.

• Conversational Japanese tutors

  Lessons that are mostly you talking. For learners who can read Japanese but freeze when someone answers back.

• Business Japanese tutors

  Meetings, email, negotiation and presentations — Japanese for the situations your job actually puts you in.

• Japanese tutors for kids

  Teachers experienced with children, who keep Japanese lessons short, build them around games, and keep a parent in the loop.

• Japanese exam preparation tutors

  Teachers who know the Japanese exam formats, mark to the real rubric, and work backwards from your test date.

• Intensive Japanese courses

  Several Japanese lessons a week with homework between them, for learners with a deadline rather than a hobby.

• Native Japanese speaking tutors

  Teachers who grew up speaking Japanese, for accent work, idiom and the register textbooks never cover.

• Japanese grammar tutors

  Focused work on the Japanese structures that keep breaking, with exercises built from your own mistakes.