sparksbet:
I'm not totally sure what you're getting at about the 'table of times' for English verbs, but I agree that the table of correlatives doesn't show you the proper usage for the correlatives in question. The proper usage of the correlatives is one of the few things I still have to look up pretty often (Being Colloquial in Esperanto is a godsend in this respect), but as far as memorizing the words I found that the table caused me to learn the correlatives faster than I learned other aspects of the language, like the prepositions.

I love the book "Being Colloquial in Esperanto" . You can find the full text online. It is in English, so those whose native language isn't English probably won't find it as helpful as I did. But it is a really great book.

sparksbet:I'm not totally sure what you're getting at about the 'table of times' for English verbs

Instead 'table of times' I should use 'table of tenses'.
Columns are Present, Past, Future, Future In Past.
Rows are Indefinite, Perfect, Continuous and Perfect Continuous.
Each cell contains positive, negative and question forms.
One table for Active Voice, the second for Passive Voice with some cells marked 'not used'.
It is clear how to form ths tenses, but not how to use them.

usayarE:For correlatives and affixes, I have to check the tables constantly too.
As for whether a table is helpful, it's controversial.
To a certain extent, you just rely on checking the table,
in the end, you can't learn it by heart.
You can probably get used to the more commonly used correlatives like -iu, -iel fairly quickly,
but every once in a while when it comes to cxiom, ties, nenie, ajn etc., you go back to the table again...

Anyway, it just takes time to learn a language.
Use it more, and give it some time,
most people should have no problem, especially for the case of Esperanto.
I think the correlatives of Esperanto are already very systematic.

If you're trying to learn correlatives by looking at the table's cells and not at the row/column titles then you're doing it wrong. It is significantly easier to learn 9 endings and 5 beginnings than it is to learn 45 whole words. It took me only a few days to internalize the 14 pieces to where I didn't need to look them up, but it took me far longer to get to where I didn't have to consciously think about the parts to understand the words.

Some of the other difficulties come from basic concept differences between Esperanto and your native tongue. English speakers often have trouble with distinguishing the difference in meaning between -o (thing) and -u (individual) words. For example, we don't have separate words to distinguish between that one and that thing, we just specify with more words.

usayarE:I agree that there are too many an-, -aux words that look too similar.
It's confusing for beginners, including me.
The correlatives are also very confusing.

And words with different affixes are also confusing sometimes.
Even the dictionary can't help you.
e.g. type "Information" in the vortaro gives informaĵo, informado and informo
If you back track the Esperanto words, they all give you the same English word "Information"
You can't really figure out what's the difference between these three words...

One tip that helps me is to use the Eo-Eo functionality of the vortaro whenever the English-Eo is being too ambiguous. It generally has a "real" dictionary definition of the word as opposed to a simple one-word translation. If the Lernu vortaro doesn't have an Eo-Eo I'll use reta vortaro or the PIV.

The -aŭ words are pretty difficult to categorize, since -aŭ is the "grammatically neutral" ending. These words generally belong to ambiguous or multiple "parts of speech". This wiki article explains some of the details:
Special Esperanto Adverbs

sergejm:

sparksbet:I'm not totally sure what you're getting at about the 'table of times' for English verbs

Instead 'table of times' I should use 'table of tenses'.
Columns are Present, Past, Future, Future In Past.
Rows are Indefinite, Perfect, Continuous and Perfect Continuous.
Each cell contains positive, negative and question forms.
One table for Active Voice, the second for Passive Voice with some cells marked 'not used'.
It is clear how to form ths tenses, but not how to use them.

Oh, wow. I've never seen anything like that before, at least not for English. It seems kind of counter-intuitive to me, since those columns don't map well onto the actual English verb forms and how they're used ("Future in Past"? I can't imagine what that's referring to. If it's referring to forms that include 'would,' whoever made that list is either sorely mistaken or gorssly oversimplifying things.) I can certainly see how that table would show you how to form most of the various English verb forms, but it certainly wouldn't help with how to use them!

That said, I think the Esperanto table of correlatives is a better idea than that simply because the Esperanto correlatives lend themselves well to the mix-and-match style that such a table indicates. But that may be my personal bias shining through!