I am not all that experienced in this game, but I don’t see why a silent period is in any way important. To be honest, I think any method where one learns lots of vocabulary and gets lots of exposure listening to the language is good, and other than that, it doesn’t really matter what one does. It can be sitting at a computer listening to Vera speaking with her daughter while playing with little blue and yellow words, or it can be memorising phrases out of a phrasebook and then trying to have conversations straight away. In my opinion, if you are learning lots of words and hearing the language spoken, it is good.