[franciscop]

Ah, I learned first going to normal classes and for me the experience was the exact opposite. Now I'm doing a lot of memorization, since it's one of the pillars for learning a language that I was lacking. I recommend trying to do both at the same time, but the good thing about learning a lot of vocabulary and some grammar is that you can start reading on your own and then learn while having fun. I am reading Yotsubato for example, which is widely recommended for beginners.

[chrischen]

I think if you already know to read/know the basics, learning vocab is fine. That's why SAT prep is a lot of vocab memorization, but even then you'd have to know how the word is used in a sentence.

Learning from scratch, I think vocab is better memorized in context.