You studied English the way you did because most teachers in your day could not speak English to save their lives. You had no choice.
I used to study English the way you did before. It became sheer drudgery and I got nowhere. Before I knew anything I was thrown into an English-speaking environment. So I had to learn interactive verbal communications first in order to survive. I had no choice either. With fluency in spoken English I could learn how to write good English without having to do any exercises from grammar textbooks. At one time, I was even stupid enough to think that grammar was not important. I was wrong. In fact, I was learning grammar all the time through improvisation during my attempts to learn interactive verbal communications. In any case, I have studied a lot more grammar at a later time just to make sure that I know more advanced topics.