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I self-studied Chinese mostly using Skritter (skritter.com) for spaced repetition of vocabulary and found it effective. The problem with learning via listening is the availability of suitable material. I estimate you need around 20k of common words, characters and phrases for understanding a large variety of vocabulary for everyday use (e.g. watching television, reading newspapers, daily conversation, business discussions, books, songs, poetry, etc.). This takes a considerable amount of time to commit to memory, so doing it efficiently is important - at 2000 hours a year, this is two years of memorising 5 items an hour, which is ambitious. While learning, it is necessary to take into account the fact that the same word might be used in different ways in different contexts. I agree grammar is relatively irrelevant from a wider perspective - there's just not that much of it compared to vocabulary, and an intuitive understanding is fine for the most part. However it is also typically taught at a beginner level with basic vocabulary and varied sentence structures, which are useful in themselves (not "a total waste of time"). Understanding the terminology also makes using reference materials easier in some cases. In practical terms then, carefully graded tuition and listening practice might be the ideal, but in practice this is an expensive route for most people when you are looking at two years of full-time learning. Realistically drilling vocabulary will get you a long way towards understanding native materials (e.g. movies with subtitles), and allows you to self-study by looking up definitions in the native language. It also allows this to happen relatively cheaply, as you can study yourself. You're not going to get to fluency without a wide vocabulary, and from a vocab / time unit level, drilling vocab is not a bad way to get there. |