We meet once per month usually. We rehearse the week prior. It is a "rehearsal" which concentrates on training deacons and officers to move in the lodge - and, if they have not delivered a particular charge, to run through it by way of confidence building and competence testing. As a rehearsal, it is expected people will have learned their words before it. They have a ritual book to support them in that, but also they can call men who have done the work they have learning - or arrange a meeting to go through it with someone.
Most of the really good work I have done on improving charges is in the car while traveling somewhere..
As to learning ritual vrs reading it; We are not supposed to read ritual, but we have done so when no competent brother is there to deliver it. It is very rare. I try to have all that organized (it is my task) at least 2 weeks prior and with backups. I am a big believer in leaning ritual by heart - because it goes into the heart (and mind). I never understood why teachers at school made us memorize a poem when we could read it off a page- but as a Freemason realized why - in learning it, you internalize it and master it in a way you don't simply reading. Listen to two experienced Masons who know ritual talk about some point - quoting bits and pieces, you realise that's a great way to understand Freemasonry in depth. The Third Degree has a line here "..the connection of our whole system and its relative dependence of its several parts.." and it is only in learning, and understanding, ritual by rote that you come to grasps with it. What many places call the "catechisms" or Questions and Answers, are of value to EAs and FCs not only because they start their learning about Freemasonry, but also how to learn. For me, that it repetition, I don't think anything substitutes for it for the average Joe to get ritual into short term memory, and then revision to move it to long term memory.
As a Director of a Public Company, operating three other businesses, two lodges, family commitments and a full diary, it is a matter of planing and prioritizing to learn what I have learned. It is not easy, but for me, has been worthwhile.