As far as I remembered, being a native Chinese student you do need to study Chinese grammar since Grade 1. This is no difference compared to students anywhere else in the world. However, the way Chinese grammar is taught and learned is quite different. Grammar is taught more of a “way of saying”, or “pattern” instead of “rules” such as in English.
Part of the reason is because many Chinese words can be used as either noun, verb, adjective or even adverb, especially compound words with no change of form in itself. As to what exact role it is playing in the sentence largely depends on the context and the words surround it. It’s not easy to define a Chinese word as just noun or verb or anything else. You have to look at it in the context.
Another reason is that a big part of grammatical rules in English or other alphabetical languages can be replaced by long compound words or phrases in Chinese easily. Therefore, rules are not that terribly needed. It’s just like using lots of self made compound English phrase to shorten the sentence. For example:
我喜欢那双”一踩就会发光发声的”鞋子。
I like that stomp-then-flash-and-sing shoe.
See? Do you need to care much on grammar rules for “stomp-then-flash-and-sing? 
The other reason includes the habit of saying for no reason. The sentence pattern may or may not make sense to you but no Chinese will misunderstand it if it is said in the right pattern. If you turn it into something reasonable to you, it’s possible no Chinese will understand it. This kind of pattern you just need to memorize as the way it is.
Many thanks to Grace from Just Learn Chinese for this guest post.
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There’s no verb conjugation in Chinese. That’s huge for people. Anyone from North America or… gasp… Europe finds Chinese ‘grammar’ a breeze because of this one element. No need to ‘defend’ the complexity of Chinese grammar. Don’t worry, what complexity is lacking in Chinese speech, is made up for, in spades, in the convoluted Chinese writing system.
But, look at things like 了 grammar, the different kinds of complements and the of use various particles. It’s complicated and takes time to master, just like grammar in European languages.
“The convoluted Chinese writing system” is actually not that difficult to grasp. Instead of learning to hand write, learn to type could speed things up a few notches. Hand writing for memorizing and practicing, typing for actually using the language in real life.
Typing Chinese is much easier than hand writing, no need to remember how to stoke out the whole character without mistake, just remember it’s look and sound.