I grew up bilingual in both English and Russian. I spent a year in Russia as a child and picked it up quickly and speak to my family in it. However, I never went through the grammar properly and even I am having problems sometimes not knowing which case to use! I think I would benefit from doing some intense grammar, even though I am a relatively “native speaker”.
I agree with you about the language courses on the market. What they are really saying is “Learn to say HELLO and HOW ARE YOU in 3 months!” If someone wants to learn a language, s/he has to have willpower and interest, otherwise s/he will not get past the first chapter.
Language experts also say “learn every day, even if it’s 20 mins”. I agree. It’s important to keep momentum.
I think grammar IS important, and you will only learn a language well if you cover all aspects of a language. Various inputs are vital (listening, reading, speaking, writing). Learning a language is indeed a great effort, but in my opinion 100% fun! And in this day and age we have access to materials like never before!

There are some useful clips in Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/user/ProfASAr
http://www.youtube.com/user/lingosteve

Both with different approaches. Professor Arguelles is an academic, so of course his approach is rather traditional, and Steve Kaufmann’s approach is less grammar orientated and more “natural acquisition”. I would say a good mix of the two approaches is useful!

Sure I’ve heard of internet calls and language exchanges. That’s not what you referred to, though. I’m not sure very many people get fluent in the language by self-study. In any case, are you saying that I’ll learn the language better by study over the Internet than if I go to the country and get myself in an immersion situation?

Listening to Internet radio, music, and the like isn’t very good immersion because you don’t get any feedback. I consider immersion being in the country away from speakers of your own language, or at least going to a class where all you speak is the language. Listening to Polish is just practice to see if I hear words I already know. It isn’t a very efficient way to learn new words.

I agree that immersion would be better, but it isn’t practical in many cases. I’d happily go to Poland to learn Polish there, but since I can’t I have to make do with less pleasant methods like grammar study.

The problem with most people is that they want to produce way too soon. Did you try to speak right away as a kid? No, you got input and after a while you wanted to speak, so you spoke.

Really, even if a language has tons of declensions and such, immersion can help. Did people in the past have grammar books and other language learning materials? No. Still, they were able to learn a language by mixing with natives and getting input.

I’m studying Polish and my tutor is the type that teaches the grammar from the start. The thing with Polish, and Russian as well, is that there is so much conjugation and declension that it is hard to get very far without it. Polish isn’t like Chinese, which I also studied, where you can learn some basic ordering principles and start talking. In most cases you can’t put a noun after the verb without doing some sort of declension, and memorizing the declensions is more efficient for me than trying to get them by osmosis or by constant correction.

On the other hand I also agree that some modern, passive methods are indispensable. Also because they’re more fun and less effort, and one simply cannot study charts for 4 hours straight.