The "read and repeat or listen and repeat" strategy of language learning fails to achieve success for either a modern language class or for real-life conversation.
The reason that the "read and repeat or listen and repeat" strategies fall short for many language learners is that the auditory memory skills are less favored than other learning channels.
And learning channels are related to how we acquire information through our five senses.
The types of sensory input that language learners learn from are (in order of most favored):
Of course, masterful learning blends and weaves sensory input from all of these channels. And, when language learners approach study tasks by engaging each of these channels (modalities), learning would be quicker and richer.
An analogy of the "read and repeat or listen and repeat" compared to engaged learning is that of watching television. How many times do you hear the name of the main characters repeated during a television program, and are unable to remember those names the next morning?
The problem is that passive mode reception of information (such as vegetating in front of a television) does not equal attention.
The television viewer is distracted by the plot, by the seminudity, by the explosions and car chases...and is not paying attention to the names of the characters.
In the same way, that attention fades when most people recite repetitive prayers; attention fades from repeating long lists of target-language vocabulary words.
Learning a language requires you to pay attention to every word, and learning new words often requires multiple repetitions where attention must be focused each .
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