I guess that’s the reason why a lot of people study Spanish (or any other language) for years and can’t even have a simple conversation. They can read something, yes. Maybe even pronounce it in a correct way. But they have no intuition, they don’t had enough input and thus they can’t think in the language and use it like they want.

Maybe you think something else, that’s ok. But think about it; are people who are learning with with lists able to have conversations within a reasonable amount of time? I’ve seen too many people struggling with a language like Spanish and just sucking at it, although they invested a massive amount of time in it.

TO Rmss: 1) I don’t see the big difference between learning verbs and nouns or adjectives. It would might different if your preferred memorizing method was to use pictoral associations, but for me a word is a word is a word. However there is one catch: in some languages it might be a good idea to indicate the gender of nouns (German), in others it is more important to mark details about the verb (fx the aorist of Greek), – you just can’t generalize.
2) I don’t know your class mates, but did you mesure speaking ability or reading ability? Did you mesure vocabulary size? Speaking about technical subjects or just simple smalltalk? Maybe the ‘talkers’ are those who choose the sentence method while the ‘readers’ do wordlists? Different methods give different results.

Let me put it this way; in my college class there are people who use sentences (some do reading, some do it with Anki or a similair program) and some do word lists (some do it with paper and some do it with Anki or similair program). Guess who has advanced more; the sentence people.

and doing it for hours on end is definitely not a good idea for normal people

Are you implying you’re abnormal?

Perhaps part of the problem was that I was not working with a list of words from something I had read; I was taking a premade list of words from Using German Vocabulary, which presents thematic lists of words. There aren’t any sentences with the lists – just a German word and the English meaning.

Maybe I’ll have a go with your method (i.e. pen and paper ) with a list of words I’ve culled from a reading.

One thing I have noticed is that you use something called Anki. I don’t – I use a folded sheet of paper, two pencils of different color (one for each language) and a support of some sort so that I can sit comfortably in my armchair wathcing telly or listening to music while I work with the lists – otherwise I would probably also get bored. Another trick is make wordlists out of the words you look up when you read – read a chapter, note the words down that you look up (or aren’t topo sure about) and them use them for a short wordlist of maybe 20-50 words. In that way you do have a connection to a context.

One more thing I have noticed: word lists are hardest to do with an unknown language, – later they get much easier and more enjoyable.

But let’s face it: making wordlists is an extremely effective method WHEN it works, but it won’t work for everybody. It won’t work for people who learn languages best through interaction or people who easily get restless – and doing it for hours on end is definitely not a good idea for normal people.