recommended Japanese practice per week

[alphonse23]

How many hours a week would you recommend a beginner practice conversational Japanese to eventually become fluent. I took a class in Japanese in college about 3 years ago, so for the most part I have all my katakana and hiragana memorized, though my memory is a little rusty, and I remember a few kanji characters. my conversational skills are total crap though.
I want to continue on with my Japanese language learning, but I can't go to Japan any time soon, so I wanted to try out online Japanese conversational classes through skype. They charge by the hour so I wanted to figure out what's a reasonable hourly amount of Japanese conversation one should invest in per week to become fluent in a reasonable amount of time. Like, assuming I learn at an average pace, would you say a recommended 3 hours a week a good amount. Would I be an advanced and strong Japanese conversationalist within a couple of years.
If anyone could help me out with this, that would be awesome.
どうもありがとうございます!

 

[Davey]

3 Skype hours a week, and an additional 5~10 hours a week of text book study (use what you learned during these hours in you skype sessions) should help a lot in becoming an higher intermediate speaker. Fluent would be difficult in my opinion because it means you have to be in a surrounding where you can speak Japanese (work in a Japanese company or try to join the Japanese community in your city).

 

[alphonse23]

Ok, thanks Davey. Three hours a week. That will probably be around $90 per week by some estimates. How long would you say it will take me to become a higher intermediate speaker? if you care to share, of course.

どうもありがと

 

[Mike Cash]

How long it will take will depend mostly on how much drudge work you're willing to do outside of the lessons.