Yes, some kind of drilling is definitely necessary, the issue is that traditional drilling is not efficient and there is so much more to language learning.

I don't think traditional drilling doesn't work at all, it's just super inefficient and boring.

That said, I also kind of feel that dialogue with other students isn't that useful.

I don't know about English in Taiwan, but if it's similar to Mainland China then then many of them started with learning English when they were 3 or so. The level of English you get from that is rather disappointing.