This is fascinating to me, because I am adamant that learning grammar (and especially verb conjugation) is completely counter productive when starting to learn a language. Especially with Spanish, where every tense and person has different terminations.

I literally just ignored conjugation and spoke in infinitive for a while.

Yo comer pan. Tu comer pan. Ayer/mañana el comer pan. Etc...

Likewise not worrying about gender, articles etc. If you use the wrong el/la/lo/les/whatever, it almost never matters, whatsoever.

Likewise if you put words in the wrong order.

Everyone understands it all.

So, just focus on building vocab, fluidity and confidence. The tenses come in time.

I do agree, though, that etymology - or at least noticing similarities between languages - can be very useful. Spanish and English speakers already know thousands of words in each language just with some basic rules. -al is the same (metal). -tion becomes -cion (conversation, conversación). Etc...

I suspect that your struggles was that you were being evaluated on the wrong things...

I'd be curious to hear your experience and what you think of what I've said.