[alexawarrior4]

"The power of SRS (spaced repetition system) cannot be overstated"

For an alternative take, there is at least some evidence that SRS is entirely unnecessary and can even hinder language learning. I know it at least is not required by first language speakers, and have also seen many examples of fluent second and third language speakers who never use SRS, or any other kind of "practiced" language acquisition such as learning vocabulary, grammar, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

For instance here's a PhD thesis of someone who learned French to fluency with only watching TV and (later) reading books:

https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9b49365

[pessimizer]

> For an alternative take, there is at least some evidence that SRS is entirely unnecessary and can even hinder language learning.

I do not believe that the above is an alternative take. Most people who do SRS pair it with tons of comprehensible input. Also, a lot of takedowns on SRS tend to actually be takedowns on memorizing 1:1 translations of words at all which is all they assume people do with SRS. I've never done those, because I think word lists are bad and 1:1 translations from L1->L2 are bad because they are always wrong (languages are different, not substitution ciphers.) I almost only deal in complete sentences in SRS, and clozes.

There's also a piece of advice given by David Parlett in an old book about learning languages straight from possibly incomplete printed grammars and native or anthropological recordings: "learn the hard stuff first." There are some things about languages that are central, complex, and should just be learned by rote. Romance conjugations are some of those things. Using SRS to learn how to conjugate reflexively and automatically in Spanish (after probably 50K card reviews) was the best thing I could have done to open up a world of comprehensible input.

[vunderba]

One of the points in Input Hypothesis is something I'm sure everybody would agree with:

This states that learners progress in their knowledge of the language when they comprehend language input that is slightly more advanced than their current level. Krashen called this level of input "i+1", where "i" is the learner's interlanguage and "+1" is the next stage of language acquisition.

Informally I've always called it "walking the knife's edge" - you have to be always on the slight edge of feeling uncomfortable to realize meaningful gains. I mean it makes logical sense. The brain is ALWAYS trying to optimize away through chunking/patterns/etc. so you have to be constantly challenging it.

It's the reason why there's a huge skill difference between a driver at one month vs 1 year, but a far less difference between a driver at one year vs ten years.