I’m juggling a few different SRSs and while they all kind of reenforce each other and I haven’t reached burnout, I’m just curious if anyone just reads and brute forced their way to doing it (with assistance from grammar guides).
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I’m gonna share my experience, so this might be a bit long, sorry 
I’ve tried getting into SRSs several times in my Korean learning journey and every single time it made me give up learning the language because I just found it extremely mind-numbing and time-consuming (when it comes to making good enough cards for myself - I didn’t find the decks I came across would fit my learning needs).
I realized I can’t just sit down and review cards as a learning exercise without wanting to gauge my eyes out, and no amount of sentence cards substitute actually reading words in the context of a text for me. I want to start consuming comprehensible input as early as I can, and I found I would need an insane amount of cards to be able to achieve that.
And so I’ve finally learned my lesson and gave up on them. It’s sad because I know they work and I’ve retained the words I learned through it, but I decided it just wasn’t a match for my learning style in the long run and if I’m bored while learning a language I will give up on it. So I just started reading/listening to anything that piqued my interest with an assisted reader (I use LingQ since I read in several languages, but I’ve also heard great things about Kimchi Reader). This way I can import all the content I want and brute force it into becoming comprehensible to me by looking up the words I don’t know and building my own word bank. I find that that works much better for me since I always have the context for words/sentences/grammar right there in the text + audio/video combo, and I can constantly reinforce my reading and listening skills while consuming content I enjoy.
At the end of the day I just substitute the spaced repetition of an SRS by naturally coming into contact with words and grammar points while keeping a steady pace of content consumption in Korean, and I find that that’s enough for me, as I don’t need to learn things by a deadline and can just trust that I will acquire the language by following the principle of exposure > recognition > production in my own time and without getting bored.
Since I started doing this I noticed major improvements in my vocabulary acquisition, reading speed, pronunciation (since I often shadow what I’m reading/listening to), and listening comprehension, and went from being forever stuck in an A2 level and having a hard time with language learning material for beginners to finally reaching a solid B1 level and being able to consume native material without wanting to die 
So TL;DR is I just found a study method that works for me as a substitute for the SRS by combining exposure to content in the target language with an assisted reader that quickly helps me make text/audio comprehensible.
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I read this in Steve Kauffman’s voice after you mentioned LinQ lol.
So what made me ask this question initially was I got some “Beginner Easy Short Story” books and have been reading those and I have been watching a lot of “comprehensible” Korean on YouTube, and there was part of me wondering if I should just kind of opt for doing these repetitively, look up as I go. I really don’t mind SRS systems as that’s how I got to where I am with Japanese, so I get you in that they definitely work, but I know I’ll reach that point where it becomes more of a chore and something I don’t enjoy.
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I’ve done less than 5 hours of Korean, but chiming in because I learn way too many languages, and I don’t think this is a language specific question.
I don’t know if you’ll be able to find this in Korean, but what helped me a lot with very beginner German and French was the Story listening method by Beniko Manson. It hasn’t really seemed to have made the jump out of elementary school second language instruction, so I watched people’s recordings of them teaching to their classes on YouTube. It’s exactly what I needed at a low level to get to watching longer comprehensible input videos.
Now, both German and French are a lot more similar to English than Korean, so it’s possible that that’s why it worked so well (although Mason was teaching English to Japanese speakers so I don’t think it’s just that).
Note: this is different than Olly Richards story listening. His books are fine, but really boring, and also more advanced (even though they claim to be for beginners).
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for korean, kind of? i’ve had a lot of “i want to learn korean!” moments in life where i would almost only immerse and occassionally google grammar points i came across. my pattern recognition was enough to help me reach an intermediate level with grammar, but my vocabulary pool was quite small and has yet to catch up. i do think that the type of content does matter when using a method like this, though. had i used comprehensible input and focused on reading more at an earlier stage, i do think i would have been able to keep my vocabulary and grammar at closer levels.
i started my first anki deck when i began taking language learning more seriously earlier this year, and i’ve found it to be a massive help! i don’t experience much burnout these days from it – though i have in the past – because i usually chip at my reviews throughout the day instead of sitting down and doing them all at once. when i did it that way, i hated flashcards and don’t think i was retaining much since i was bored, distracted, and generally unhappy doing them. i do think it would have been worse if i used a premade deck as well. i tried one once for japanese and hated that the first time i was coming across words was through a premade deck. i enjoy learning through context much more than through flashcards.
for spanish, however, i don’t bother with flashcards of any form and have no issues with vocabulary. i will clarify that i think that is due to the fact that my family is puerto rican and i’ve grown up around the language (although i rebelled against speaking another language as a kid and tried to deny its existence 
). everything i know in and about spanish is entirely from hearing the language from people around me, songs, shows, etc., and the one spanish course in college. i am no where near fluent and i do not actively try to get better, but i don’t have issues with the vocabulary i’ve acquired with time. something like brute force, consistent exposure, and a solid foundation of grammar was enough to get me to a comfortable conversational level. the similarities between english and spanish definitely do help though. hopefully this helps a little even though it’s not exactly the same 
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i started learning kr 3 years ago. i used a premade anki deck for the first 500 words (it was not the best, there were some pointless konglish words and stuff i never seen in my immersion at that time) then intermittently went through periods of making my own cards or not over the next year or so.
i completely dropped them this year because they were boring and i wanted to spend the time doing sthing fun (like reading more 
)
In the periods i used them my vocab acquisition was not noticably different to when i wasn’t. (and i know because i use kimchi reader so i can track my learned words over time)
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I wish Steve Kaufmann would sponsor me tbh
I guess it all comes down to: do what you enjoy for as long as you enjoy it, and once it stops making sense you can always adjust accordingly.
I’ve been doing this by having periods of focusing heavily on input interspaced with weeks where I sit down to actively study grammar and do writing exercises, and also changing up the content I consume once it doesn’t interest me anymore. When I feel myself getting bored, I switch it up to keep myself engaged in the language and reinforcing what I’ve learned in different ways.
Another thing I always keep in mind is the idea of content domains, so I make sure to select broad topics I’m interested in consuming where there’s enough comprehensible content so that I can learn through repetitive exposure and using a variety of means (podcasts, vlogs, graded readers, picture books, etc.). I slowly feel myself getting better in understanding a specific topic, and some of what I learned there will always transfer over when I decide to tackle another one.
Anyways, I would definitely take advantage of using SRSs for as long as you can handle it alongside regular exposure to engaging content in the language, as you’ll definitely build enough comprehension skills to make any changes in your learning approach much smoother. When you know the tools aren’t as important as time spent with the language, I feel like you can’t really go wrong.
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I don’t want to pay for LingQ. But this is largely how I got proficient with Japanese.
An open source analog to LingQ:
And a QOL update to lwt:
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I’m a bit late to the topic, but oh well. For Korean, I’ve gone through periods of using flashcards a lot. I have now dropped that completely however. In my experience, the benefit I get from making and revewing flashcards isn’t that much better than I get from lots and lots of input (mainly reading in my case). The extra time I don’t spend making flashcards I can spend reading, and additionnal time of top of that because I don’t have to worry about writing down words for future flashcards and therefore I’m more motivated to read.
I’ve used LingQ a lot, although not so much recently since I have a lot of physical books to go through. After all, there’s no need to look up every single word when I know I’ll get it eventually through context. Now, if I do look up something, I am partial to writing it down directly in the book, that way if it comes up later I can go back and check it. Let’s just say I won’t be selling those books to anyone, but it works, and that’s all that matters.
For a cheaper LingQ equivalent, you can use Kimchi Reader! It’s Korean specific, but otherwise pretty much has the same functions as LingQ. (the only reason I have LingQ currently instead is that I discovered Kimchi Reader right after getting a one year subscription for LingQ)
Weirdly, this is language dependant. His Korean short stories are said to be intermediate but are really the same stories as the beginner ones in other languages. And, of course, it sticks to only the most basic beginner grammar and straightforward sentence structure, so the whole thing is painful to read as an intermediate (and annoying as a beginner because of the vocab used).
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