There are still learning parties but they are rare for any pre-60 content. You can either

-make friends on the server and level with them as well
-join a fc and use them to fill the gaps in a 8 man dungeon/trials
-que together and the 4 of you would just be placed with extra 4 randoms.

For the actual grind you could skip all of the trials and grind via dungeon roulettes or potd or fates. So over the course of the msq there would be a total of 11? Trials/ 8 man dungeons.