"How much input?" remains an empirical question, one that can probably be adequately answered by research. To be more precise, we would like to know: "How much low filter/comprehensible input is necessary for students to acquire enough competence in the second language, so that they can use the informal environment to continue improving?" Despite our current paucity of data, what seems clear to me now is that we are not using enough of the available instruction time for supplying comprehensible input, and that we will be able to stimulate more rapid (and more comfortable) second language acquisition if we put greater focus on input.

Before concluding this section, I should point out that what I am suggesting is not at all new: along with Newmark (1971), I am suggesting that the "extensive" side of the extensive-intensive reading debate is correct, that students profit more from reading for meaning, and reading great quantities of material, than from what Newmark calls "cryptoanalytic decoding" of difficult paragraphs, and that students gain more from participating in conversations, many conversations, than from focused listening comprehension exercises.

We turn now to two other features programs should contain if they are to encourage language acquisition.

E. Other Features that Encourage Acquisition

1. THE STUDENT SHOULD NOT BE PUT ON THE DEFENSIVE

The phrase "on the defensive" comes from Stevick's well known book, Memory, Meaning, and Method. What it means to me is that methods and materials should not be a test of the student's abilities or prior experiences, should not merely reveal weaknesses, but should help the student acquire more.

More generally, we are talking about keeping the affective filter "low", making sure the student is open to the input. It may be the case that if we use procedures that are "true" to the input hypothesis, and that satisfy all the other characteristics of optimal input, the kind of input that results, and the classroom procedures that evolve, will satisfy this requirement as well and help keep the filter low. I will attempt, in this section, to outline a few general procedures and practices that do this.

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