Beginners learn grammar even if they’re not actively studying it. Grammar is the study of how to form words and sentences. If someone learnt “he says”, “he said”, “they say”, “they said”, they would’ve learned how to conjugate verbs and therefore learned grammar. That’s how people usually start learning grammar. But at some point they start having questions and so go looking for answers and studying grammar more actively.

Absolutely. Grammar is essential. It’s the blueprint of the language, it’s the formula to put the vast vocabulary of every language together to effectively communicate.

If you can get your student to understand the difference between these two sentences, then you are teaching grammar. The question is whether or not you are using the terms subject, direct object, noun, pronoun, etc. when you are describing what is going on.

I teach English to an adult from Ukraine. We have never studied grammar as a separate topic on its own. We have only read novels together and have spoken together a lot in English. If he says something that is bad English, I will repeat what he has said in the standard way. However, I have found that he still makes certain errors repeatedly. Because of this, I am planning on making some recordings of normal, everyday sentences that include the grammar that he screws up consistently. My goal is for him to listen to the recordings repeatedly until the correct sentence construction becomes lodged in his brain. I want him to be able to say the sentence correctly not because he can sit and figure out what to say, but because he can automatically hear in his head what the correct form would be without having to think about it.

Will this work? Time will tell.

My personal view is that grammar is not important for a beginner. I'm a beginner who is moving into the B1 and B2 levels. When I started at A1 all I wanted to do was communicate. I got a thrill when I could understand 2 or 3 seconds of French television. I loved it when I could say "this bus go the library?". I didn't care about memorizing grammar rules. I just wanted to gather up as much vocabulary as I could. I found this rewarding and encouraging.

Now that I'm moving into intermediate French I am finding grammar more rewarding and encouraging because suddenly I can expand on ALL that vocabulary I learned as a beginner. So one word will become 10 words for 10 different situations once you understand the grammar rules ("is this bus going to the library?").

For me, the most important thing is maintaining enthusiasm and excitement about learning my new language. To do that I need to find many little rewards along the way. There are few <em>immediate</em> rewards when learning grammar as a beginner. In my experience it's just a lot of rote learning and drudgery. The rewards of grammar come once you know a certain amount of vocabulary. So my advice is to focus on vocabulary first and then clean and arrange all that knowledge by learning grammar.

I'm not a teacher but my own personal opinion is no. Many beginners actually struggle with something even more basic. Pronunciation. I feel like it's important to learn pronunciation first and basic words. Then build off of that with short sentences then longer sentences along with basic grammar.