Easiest Critical Languages to Learn

[LevelUP]

The categorizations are based on working proficiency, which is different from fluency. Tourist-level would be below proficiency which is below fluency.

Proficiency means that you know enough to get by at work and while living in a country where the language is spoken. Fluency means being able to speak the language at the level of a native speaker. Tourist-level is far below fluency.

There are different levels of fluency, from basic to a native level. 
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/res...ncy-resume

Different places have different methods how they measure fluency and what is the gold standard. 

As for Spanish, a working level fluency is a B1/B2. (3- Professional working proficiency)

Where A1/A2 is basic, and C1/C2 is near-native. 

That FSI page has been there for a long time.  You can get that "Speaking-3/Reading-3” level in around 200 hours in Spanish and other languages using efficient teaching methods.

However, in a school setting, you can spend 3 years in classes and get nowhere.  Then hop into an immersive course and learn more in 2 weeks than you learned in 3 years. 

Those were some of the things I discussed in my thread about boot camp language learning where students could understand 98% of spoken Chinese in just 5 weeks. (play audio of that page to hear the actual students)
https://www.npr.org/2014/06/07/319805068...ssionaries

I think you would have to agree that the school way of teaching foreign language is deeply flawed.  Those classes should be 3 hours a day, not 1 hour a day.  And they should be breaking students up to practice speaking and hearing the language 1 on 1. Instead, they mainly teach students how to conjugate verbs and pass a multiple-choice test all of which is pretty useless in the real world.