Very good points. When I started learning german, I had to learn what all the different grammar rules were in English. I didn't remember what all the terms meant in my own language, so it was hard to put the german grammar rules into perspective. Learning german helped me to understand my own language more and I can explain it better. What is interesting is that I heard people recommend learning Esperanto for a month or two to get the grammar rules down, and doing so will make learning any other language much easier.

I completely agree that a native speaker more often than not do not explicitly know the grammar rules to their language. It comes natural to us because we have spoke our language all of our life. I have been correcting people's sentences on this site when they ask for help. I just naturally know what sounds correct, but when asked about a specific grammatical reason why something is correct than I might not know. It seems that I have forgotten the grammatical rules that I learned in school. I had to pull out all of my old English books from college. I need to refresh my memory. If one is not an English teacher by profession they may have forgotten a lot of the rules to grammar. I enjoyed reading your insightful notebook entry.