My character is 14-15, and through a bunch of irrelevant circumstances is stranded in a foreign country where literally noone speaks English. She has a basic knowledge of the language: basic sentence structure, small vocabulary, she can maybe ask where the toilet is and how much for a loaf of bread.
How long would it realistically take for her to become reasonably fluent? I read the wikipedia entry on the subject and a couple of articles, but they mostly apply to studying a foreign language in a classroom rather than learning it to function.
Can anyone help? I suppose I'm most interested in personal experiences.