Don't start me on teaching in French primary schools! I'm afraid I don't have a positive impression of it.
I once taught a pupil whose parents had been living in France for two years. The girl had been at a French primary school and showed me her exercise books and reports. Her handwriting was beautiful and her reports were all positive, but her teachers hadn't realised she couldn't understand a word.
I had two years of literacy catch up and to start teaching her French from scratch. I've talked to French teachers, for whom differentiation is an unknown concept. They deliver and assess, but don't seem to adapt teaching to individuals. If the pupils can't hack it, tough luck!
(OK! I did get started!)
PS. I don't think pupils do need to understand grammar before they can repeat language. A good language teacher uses building blocks, just as the famous language teacher, Michel Thomas, did.
Take a sentence, drill it until it's known off by heart, then adapt,
eg. "I eat an ice cream" could be changed to "He eats an ice cream", "He ate an ice cream", "Do you like eating ice cream?", "Do you like eating pizza?" and so on.