Does supplementation help?

What kinds of supplementation, if any, are necessary or even helpful in in- school reading programs? The most popularly used forms of supplementation are additional writing and grammar study. I have presented evidence showing that increasing output (speaking or writing) does not result in additional language or literacy development, whether it be in the form of "comprehensible output" or not (Krashen, 1994, 2003; see also S.Y. Lee, 2001). In addition, I remain convinced (in fact I am more convinced than ever) that formal grammar study makes only a peripheral and fragile contribution to competence in a second language; a close look at the parade of studies claiming to show that "grammar works" only confirms the lack of impact of grammar study (Krashen, 1999, 2003).

A recent study by Mason (2003) was a direct demonstration that these forms of supplementation do not add to the power of reading. EFL students in Japan participated in an extensive reading program for three semesters. One group wrote short summaries of what they read in Japanese. Thus, their progress was dependent on what they read in English. A second group wrote summaries in English, and a third group wrote summaries in English that were corrected, and returned, and students had to rewrite the summaries based on the corrections. Mason reported no difference in gains in English among the three groups, and reported that the group that wrote summaries in Japanese was the most efficient, acquiring as much English in about half the total time devoted to English.

Other forms of supplementation may work, however. It is reasonable to hypothesize that at lower levels, when students first reach the level at which they can read independently in English, it will be of great help to inform students what is available; this is the goal of sheltered popular literature. Also, teacher-student conferences in which books are discussed can stimulate interest in more reading. Shin (2004) and Neuman and Celano (2004) provide cases suggesting that direct encouragement from teachers and librarians resulted in more reading; in these cases, students, it appears, had the competence to read, but lacked the confidence to try reading more challenging material and/or did not realize how interesting the reading was.

Note that the forms of supplementation that are hypothesized to be useful are those that help make input more comprehensible, more interesting, and encourage students to obtain more input. Those that research has not shown to be effective are those that attempt to use means other than comprehensible input.

The use of "unnatural" forms of supplementation is stimulated by the assumption that natural acquisition is not enough, that more needs to be done than simply supply interesting, comprehensible input. This fear could be a self-fulfilling prophecy: there has been little attempt to maximize the amount of comprehensible input, little attempt to combine interesting discussions, read alouds, recreational listening, listening to tapes, watching films, all in one educational program. We do not know the limits of comprehensible input, because it has not really been tried.

References

Cho, K.S. and Krashen, S. 1994. Acquisition of vocabulary from the Sweet Valley Kids series. Journal of Reading 37: 6620667.

Cho, K.S. and Krashen, S. 1995a. From Sweet Valley Kids to Harlequins in one year. California English 1,1: 18-19.

Cho, K.S. and Krashen, S. 1995b. Becoming a dragon: Progress in English as a second language through narrow free voluntary reading. California Reader 29: 9- 10.

Cohen, K. 1999. Reluctant eighth grade readers enjoy sustained silent reading. California Reader 33 (1): 22-25.

Constantino, R., Lee, S.Y., Cho, K.S., and Krashen, S. 1997. Free voluntary reading as a predictor of TOEFL scores. Applied Language Learning 8: 111-118.

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