Ever heard of the sentence method (
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com...-sentences-why - doesn't matter it's Japanese, learning a language is learning a language)? I came to the conclusion that learning loose words is just a waste of time. In high school I had to memorize hundreds of words (all out of context) for French and German. I can only
understand German because it's relatively close to my native tongue (Dutch). None of the words stick.
Learning out of context (especially vocabulary) will give a too big work-load. Some months ago I read a paper about the memory load an average language learner has. It said that a learner either concentrates on vocabulary (while making loads of grammatical error) or on grammar (while not knowing a lot of words). Simply concentrating on everything in the beginning will generate a too big memory-load. But the funny thing is that it shouldn't be like that.
I've been studying Spanish for about a year now, and I never encountered such thing as 'memory-overload'. Why? Because I use a Spaced Repetition System. I use flash cards. Spanish sentence on the question side, Dutch translation on the answer side. That's the way I test myself. This way I've become so good at Spanish that I now can handle Spanish - Spanish sentences. So; a Spanish sentence on the question side, and an explanation of difficult words in that sentence.... in Spanish. I just look up the definition in the RAE dictionary or write an explanation myself.
I have a pretty big vocabulary and a good understanding of grammar, and I never had to work for it so far. Just sentences with my SRS and massive input like music, books, audiobooks, etc. This proves that the sentence method works two ways: learning vocabulary AND grammar (maybe you can't explain the grammar, but you know
how it works and that it's correct).
Just my two cents.