How Much Chinese Should You Study Per Day?

Thirty minutes a day is enough for steady progress over a few years. An hour a day roughly halves the time to any given level. More than two hours is only practical for people who study full time. For new material, three to ten new words or characters a day is what most working adults can sustain once the reviews they create are counted. Reviews decide how long your day gets.

This article gives minutes by goal, then explains the daily load in plain terms, since “characters per day” and “hours per day” are the same question seen from two sides.

Minutes Per Day by Goal

The most reliable published guide to hours is the official TOCFL suggested study hours. They are cumulative and given for learners outside a Chinese-speaking region (and about half as many inside one):

Level	Suggested hours outside a Chinese-speaking region
Level 1 (A1)	240 to 480
Level 2 (A2)	480 to 720
Level 3 (B1)	720 to 960
Level 4 (B2)	960 to 1,920

Divide those by your hours per year. Thirty minutes a day is about 180 hours a year, and one hour a day about 365.

Daily time	Hours a year	Level 2 (480 to 720 hours)	Level 3 (720 to 960 hours)
30 minutes	about 180	about 2.6 to 4 years	about 4 to 5.3 years
1 hour	about 365	about 1.3 to 2 years	about 2 to 2.6 years
2 hours	about 730	about 8 to 12 months	about 1 to 1.3 years

These are straight divisions of the official ranges, assuming you study every day, which nobody does. Add a margin for missed days if you want a cautious figure. They count all study hours, including classes, reading and listening. The wider picture, with what each level lets you do, is in how long it takes to learn Mandarin.

What That Means in Practice

• 15 to 20 minutes: keeps what you know alive and adds slowly. Good for a very busy season.
• 30 minutes: a solid base for a working adult, and enough for a first Taiwan trip’s worth of language within a year or so.
• 45 to 60 minutes: steady progress toward Band A or B in a few years.
• Two hours or more: a student’s or full-time learner’s pace. Fine if you have it, but do not feel behind if you do not.

Why Reviews Decide the Length of Your Day

When you add a new word to a spaced repetition system, you also add a series of reviews. A new card is a short task today and a stream of small tasks for months. That is why a learner who adds twenty cards a day finds, a few months later, that the session has grown with no extra effort on their side.

A rough planning rule: about five to six reviews a day for every card you add daily, measured at the end of the first month, rising to about 10 to 15 by months three to four as older cards keep coming back. The real figure depends on your scheduler, your settings and how often you get cards wrong, so treat it as a planning guide. The mathematics of avoiding burnout explains why the pile grows.

New cards a day	Reviews a day, end of month one	Reviews a day, months three to four	Review time at 10 seconds a card (months three to four)
3	about 15 to 18	about 30 to 45	about 5 to 8 minutes
5	about 25 to 30	about 50 to 75	about 8 to 13 minutes
10	about 50 to 60	about 100 to 150	about 17 to 25 minutes
20	about 100 to 120	about 200 to 300	about 33 to 50 minutes

The load keeps rising for a while, then levels off as intervals lengthen. Plan for the number three or four months from now.

Choose Your New-Card Number Backwards

1. Decide how many minutes a day you have for reviews.
2. Divide by ten seconds to find how many reviews that is (30 minutes is about 180).
3. Divide that by about 10 to 15.

For 15 minutes of reviews, you get about 90 reviews, which supports roughly six to nine new cards a day. Round down if your life is unpredictable. A missed day makes a pile.

Characters Per Day

The same arithmetic applies to characters. Learners often ask whether 150 characters in a few weeks is too many, usually because they have started to forget the early ones. It depends on the review minutes you can give. For most working adults, three to ten new characters a day is sustainable, and fewer on busy weeks. If you add characters inside words rather than alone, each card carries more, so fewer cards cover the same characters.

The reasoning for choosing words or characters is covered in learn Chinese characters or words. If you use Anki, the numbers can be set in the app, and the settings are in how to configure Anki for Chinese.

Hours Versus Consistency

Studying six hours on Saturday and nothing else is less effective for vocabulary than twenty minutes daily, because spaced review needs regular intervals. A longer weekend session is still useful for things that are not flashcards: reading, a tutor lesson, listening, writing practice.

A sensible weekly shape:

• Daily: reviews and a few new cards (15 to 30 minutes).
• Two or three days: listening or reading (15 to 20 minutes).
• Weekly: one longer session or a lesson (45 to 60 minutes).

What to Do When the Pile Gets Big

If reviews have grown beyond your time, stop adding new cards for a week or two. Do not delete cards or reset. Your daily number stops growing once you stop adding to it, and it falls as you work through the backlog in shorter sessions. If you have been away a while, restarting Chinese after a break covers how.

A Note on Taiwan

If you live in Taiwan, your listening hours are far higher than your study hours, since you hear Mandarin in shops, on the MRT and on television. The official hours assume about half as much study in a Chinese-speaking region as outside one. That does not remove the need for reviews, but it does mean your 30 minutes does more.

Related Reading

• The Mathematics of Burnout: the review snowball in detail.
• How to Configure Anki For Chinese: settings for new cards and reviews.
• How Long Does It Take to Learn Mandarin?: levels, bands and timelines.
• Learning Mandarin With a Full-Time Job and Family: fitting the minutes in.