Well, I guess I've just gotten it beat into my head by Japanese language teachers who leap on me if I leave out particles. Incidentally, I don't think that your dichotomy holds among professional language teachers: at least in my experience, both nonJapanese Americans teaching Japanese and Japanese natives teaching English are grammar-strict. (And the latter are far too in to outlandish set phrases. "I'm fine, thank you, and you?" "I'm fine. Please sit down." You had to be there.)