> This is the only way to learn. You repeat things you know many times to commit them to your memory. Mindless repetition is not the only way to learn. For ma

> This is the only way to learn. You repeat things you know many times to commit them to your memory. Mindless repetition is not the only way to learn. For many types of things, understanding the rules or knowing the patterns is far more efficient and effective. We were just talking about German noun genders and plurals elsewhere on this thread. Of course, one can memorise the gender and the plural of every noun in isolation, by rote. But simply knowing a few common patterns would save an incredible amount of effort.