Overlearning - You know it, but do you know it?

Polyglottery has been reading up on theory again and has found some nice bits on overlearning. Be sure to check out the original article. Good excerpt:

We tend to get to the level of awareness, then we get tired of what we are practicing. Awareness is the level where we can recognize the phrase or pattern or word sequence. But to get to the point of really knowing (commanding automatically) that bit of language, the learner must push on to the level of overlearning.

This point is key, for nothing bogs down the self-teaching language learner more in the long run than the failure to master fundamentals before moving on to more advanced materials.