Hello, Emmi

I was learning the 6 verb types at the very beginning. In my personal opinion, it is very important to know how they look like and how to deal with them, as many other aspects of Finnish grammar require this knowledge.

It wasn't easy for me, mostly because I was eager to learn as much as I can in a short amount of time, so I proceeded to imperfect and other topics without learning the verb types properly, but nevertheless, I came back to this topic again and again, tried to gather more examples. Sometimes I just picked up some random verb and conjugated it in present tense.

At some point, I just stopped thinking about this, as it became obvious to me, just by looking at a verb, which type it belongs to. I'd say, it definitely made my life easier.

Again, these are just my suggestions, I'm not a professional teacher, but I hope the answer was helpful.

Good luck teaching Finnish, it's a tough business, I believe =)

Cheers,

Stanislaw