@CorneliaAdams That only says that the method used in that particular school system is not effective. That doesn't mean that a mixture of formal training and immersion wouldn't be effective. I watched the whole video and the way I learned other languages is not at all like how he described. For example, my teacher told us to listen to music in French because that allows you learn one of the least formal uses of a language. I would highly recommend doing that. I listen to music in about eight languages. She also told us to watch movies that we had already seen many times and knew what the lines were in the language we were trying to learn. You start with the foreign audio and subtitles on, and then once you get a handle on that, turn off the subtitles. Also, I kind of distrust this guy because he doesn't believe people about their own ability, but only believes in his own opinions. And he said "entirely" [8:33] in a way that doesn't make sense. He has some inaccuracies in what he is saying around that point. Like saying that speaking isn't necessary for a student to learn. That the focus should be entirely on listening. He even admits, in another video, that his view on learning language, which aligns with the Natural Order Hypothesis is controversial. So you can't really base an opinion of "the result speak for themselves" on his videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2zRk4PqMSA
There is a phrase in English "Use it or lose it." And this is especially applicable to language. If you don't regularly use the language that you learned, your ability in that language will decrease dramatically. The human brain just isn't designed for an adult to easily learn another language. Neurologically speaking, a toddler's brain is evolved to learn language and other things necessary for their survival as a member of a tribal species, but around puberty, the brain actually prunes unneeded or unused neural connections. So the ability of a teenager or adult to learn a language is not the same as a child's. That's not my opinion, it is a scientific fact. So the natural or immersion method of learning a language works for children, but less so for an adult. That is one of the reasons why adults are trained in a more formal manner.
Really the best option is to give people a base of formal training and then focus on immersive speaking. Almost everyone who received formal training in a language can read that language significantly better than they can speak it, because schools don't focus on that, and historically, it was not possible to give people immersive training in a language because we didn't have the Internet. That allows people to speak with a large number of native speakers of a language, even though they do not live in an area where there is a large community of native speakers.
It's really not the terms that are important, it's what those terms allow you to learn about a language. For example, knowing the term "gerund" and "suffix" aren't necessary for speaking or writing in a language however, knowing how a gerund is formed allows a student to identify when an verb with the suffix -ing is acting as a verb or a noun, which is important to know. It would be very confusing if someone said "Well this thing forms this part of speech if you add this thing to this part of speech." English has more tenses than a majority of major languages, which can often be very difficult for people who come from a language that has fewer, like Russian which has only three tenses. Knowing the names of the tenses may not be the most important thing, but knowing how they work, especially if it is very different from your own native language, is. For me, the basics do help me to learn a language, my brain has a very logical and orderly way of thinking. So not everybody has your preference for language learning, everybody learns differently. In English, we often say a person is a "visual learner" or an "auditory leaner" and this is similar.
Learning a language using things that interest you is a good motivational tool, but it is just a tool. And you can't assume that everyone learns in the same way that you do. And that would be unfair to the people who have a different learning style than you do. And people have misunderstandings because they don't know some more formal things. For example, I remember a question someone on here asked where a person was annoyed with their teacher because they thought she was adding an extra letter to words in an extremely exaggerated an obvious way, but the teacher actually wasn't, it was part of the evolution of English from Old English to Modern English, which a study of linguistics would teach a person. Basically, I'm not arguing for an entirely formal method of learning, just a middle ground between what you are saying works for you and the method you are disregarding. This allows for the highest number of people to learn what they need before managing their own education in the way that works best for them. And since you were educated in a formal or academic manner, you really can't know how much that helped you to learn a language. It's not possible to separate that out and say it did not benefit you at all, only that, in your opinion, a different way works for you now. If you tried learning another new language with no formal or academic method of teaching it, only then could you say that with certainty. That's another example of what I mean by my brain works in a very logical manner. So in reality, the results vary from person to person.
And in regard to you last comments, you would usually say "something new doesn't necessarily have to be fun." Since it is an adverb, its place in the sentence is before the verb it modifies. Your phrasing does not sound right to a native speaker. And "a good ground to start out" should be "good ground to start with." And there should be an "is" in the sentence with "is the process."
It would be "starting with" not "starting from." If you say from, then you need more to the sentence, such as "starting from just checking the weather to speaking a language fluently." Also you could say "It would distract me and impede by learning process," but not "cause a distraction." And if you did go with something similar to your phrasing, it would be "It would be a distraction."
