How long would it take me to learn to read Mandarin

[chinesedawah]

Hey to all! Ni Ho Ma!

 

I am a complete beginner in Mandarin, and was wondering if, with 1300 hours, i would know how to read and perhaps even write in Mandarin to a degree where i could get across many concepts on say, my world view on issues.

 

 

[Flickserve]

With a lot of assumptions, you could compare that to University students.

 

Assume 20h classroom time and 10h self study per week for 30weeks in an academic year. That would mean 900h by the end of the first year.  Another half a year would take you to past 1300h. I am unsure if a second year student can talk very well because there are many anecdotal stories of students learning Chinese,  they arrive in China, yet cannot be understood by local population.

 

I suppose then if you specialised in a particular area of world issues, you would be able to listen to the news but not fully comprehend.

[chinesedawah]

@Flickserve

 

Thank you so much for the reply!

 

How well do you think i would be able to read a newspaper after 1000 hours of learning ?

 

My goal is to try to be able to write and formulate say, a 300-400 word article on a given topic of interest. 

 

Do you believe this is possible? 

[Lu]

I think it's possible, with dedicated and effective studying, to get to a level where you can express your ideas in a short article, but the article won't be very well written. People will understand your point but initially, you'll sound like a twelve-year-old. (With more practice you would improve, of course.)

 

Depending on your eventual goal, you could also consider writing the articles in your native language and having them translated.

[somethingfunny]

You seem to have very specific requirements in terms of time you can commit and what you wish to be able to do.  Maybe you could provide some more information and then we could provide more relevant advice.  For example, how did you settle on the 1300 hours figure, and what kind of article do you want to summarise?