The reference numbers

Certification bodies put the total volume needed to reach B2 at between 500 and 650 hours of guided learning from scratch. At 5 hours of work per week, that is about two and a half years; at 10 hours per week, a little over a year. These numbers assume efficient learning: structured lessons, active practice, regular exposure to the language.

But that volume varies a lot depending on your first language. For a Spanish or Italian speaker, whose language shares French grammar and much of its vocabulary, the low end of the range is realistic. For a Chinese learner, you should honestly aim at the top of the range, or beyond: the distance between the two systems (sounds, conjugation, noun gender, alphabet versus characters) makes every stage cost more hours. This is not about talent, it is linguistic distance.

The real factor: what you do with your hours

A hundred hours of passive class (listening to a teacher, filling in gap exercises) are not worth fifty hours of active practice: speaking, writing, being corrected, listening again. Progress towards B2 is directly tied to how much you produce, and that is exactly what apps on their own do not give you.

The other decisive factor is consistency. Thirty minutes a day beats three and a half hours on Sunday, for the same total, especially for listening: the ear is built by frequent exposure, not by massive sessions. A student who listens to 15 minutes of authentic French every day improves their listening faster than a student who does twice as much once a week.

Stage by stage (for a Chinese-speaking learner)

Zero to A1: 3 to 4 months at 5-6 hours per week, because this is the phase where pronunciation and reading demand a real upfront investment. A1 to A2: 4 to 6 months at the same pace. A2 to B1: 6 to 9 months, the level where many learners stall, because you have to move from memorised sentences to a language you build yourself. B1 to B2: 9 to 12 months, the longest jump, because B2 requires fluency and the ability to argue a point, not just to communicate.

Realistic total: between 2 and 3 years of regular work for a motivated Chinese-speaking beginner. Anyone advertising “B2 in 6 months” is talking either about learners whose language is close to French, or about a full immersion pace (25-30 hours per week), or about a sales pitch.

How to actually shorten the road

Three levers have a measurable effect. One: individual correction, because a student whose written and spoken work is corrected every week avoids turning mistakes into habits, which saves months of “unlearning” later. Two: daily active listening with content slightly above your level. Three: a dated goal, because students signed up for an exam (DELF B1, then B2) consistently progress faster than those who will “see how it goes”, because a deadline structures the work.