Been learning French on and off for a couple years, mostly with Duolingo and a textbook. I keep hearing different numbers - some say 600 hours, some say 1000 - and I'm trying to figure out if I'm on track or way behind where I should be.
The hour count thing is useful as a ballpark but it's genuinely dependent on what you're actually doing and how efficiently you're learning. Duolingo alone won't get you there in 600 hours - the app is great for vocab and recognition, but B1 means you need to *produce* language, understand native speakers at conversational speed, and handle real grammar complexity. If you've been doing Duolingo plus a textbook for a couple years on and off, you've probably logged decent hours already, but the real question is how much of that time involved actually trying to speak, listen to unscripted content, or interact with the language outside the app.
The pitfall nobody mentions: people conflate "time spent" with "time learning." You can spend 1000 hours and still be weak if it's all low-intensity input. Conversely, someone doing 3-4 hours a week of conversation practice plus structured grammar work will progress way faster than someone doing 10 hours a week passively consuming Duolingo. If you want to know where you actually stand, the real test is trying to have a simple conversation or listen to a French podcast and see how much you catch.
At this point, I'd say stop worrying about the magic number and instead patch the gaps you'll notice. If listening is painful, add more listening. If speaking feels impossible, that's your priority. The 600-750 hour range is legit as a reference point, but only if those hours were spent on something resembling actual learning - and Duolingo mixed with a textbook on and off is probably less efficient than that assumes.
Don't stress too much about hitting an exact hour count - that number is going to vary wildly depending on what you're actually doing during those hours. Someone grinding Duolingo for an hour might get way less real language exposure than someone having a casual conversation with a native speaker for 30 minutes. The 600-1000 hour range you're hearing comes from studies like the FSI estimates, but those assume pretty structured, focused learning with a teacher or immersion. Your situation with Duolingo and a textbook is different, and honestly might be slower for speaking skills but still builds vocabulary and grammar.
What matters more is the quality of your input and whether you're actually using the language. If you've been doing this on and off for a couple years with just those tools, you're probably not at B1 yet unless you're putting in serious daily time. B1 means you can handle basic conversations, understand the main points of texts, and deal with most everyday situations - that's a solid bump up from what Duolingo alone usually gets you. You'd likely benefit from adding some speaking practice or shadowing native speakers at this point, not just grinding more exercises.
Instead of chasing a magic number, focus on doing a test or talking to someone and seeing where you actually land. That'll tell you way more than counting hours. If you're not there yet, you know what to fix - more conversation, more listening to real French media, more writing. The off-and-on pattern is probably holding you back more than the total hours anyway.
The honest issue is that "hours" gets measured so differently depending on who's counting - active conversation practice counts way more than passively swiping through an app, so two people with the same hour total can be at totally different levels. Most language folks seem to land somewhere between 600-1000 hours for B1, but that's really a guess based on immersion conditions and how much you're actually engaging with the material. If you've been doing Duolingo plus textbook work for a couple years, you probably have more hours in than you think, though the mix matters more than the raw number - you'd get better feedback jumping into a conversation exchange or a language meetup than worrying about hitting some magic hour target.
The FSI puts B1 for French at around 600-750 hours, which is where those numbers come from. But here's the thing - that's specifically for intensive, structured classroom learning with a teacher giving you feedback, not Duolingo + a textbook on the side. Your actual mileage depends a lot on whether you're doing speaking practice or just reading and listening, and consistency matters way more than total hours. If you've been learning on and off for a couple years, you might have fewer active hours than someone who ground it out in six months of daily study, even if the calendar time is longer.
The real difference is whether you're passively consuming or actually using the language to communicate - I spent months on apps feeling productive until I started forcing myself into conversation exchanges, and that's when things actually clicked. Mix your Duolingo time with speaking to native speakers regularly, even just 15-20 minutes a week, and you'll hit B1 way faster than someone grinding 1000 hours of app-only stuff!
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