Another "balanced" method prescribes communicative activities from the beginning, but claims that comprehensible input alone is not enough: it needs "supplementation." The usual form supplementation takes is additional output and/or grammar activities.

Mason (2003) provided a direct demonstration of the inefficacy of output and correction as supplements to comprehensible input: In her study, three groups of adult EFL students participated in an extensive English reading program for three semesters. One group wrote brief summaries of what they read in Japanese, another wrote their summaries in English, and a third wrote summaries in English that were corrected, and they then rewrote the summaries. Those in the second and third groups had requested the treatment they received. Mason reported no differences in gains on three different measures of English among the three groups, and concluded that the group that wrote their summaries in Japanese was the most efficient, in terms of amount of English acquired and the total time devoted to English.

Some conscious knowledge of grammar can be of use in editing, in filling small gaps left by acquisition that even very advanced second (and first) language users seem to have. It appears to be the case, however, that there are severe limitations on the learning and use of this knowledge (Krashen, 1982).

The kinds of supplementation that can have a strong impact on language development are those that help students get more comprehensible input (e.g. discussion of books students may find of interest) or make input more comprehensible (e.g. provide background information). In other words, what will work are activities that deal with the cause of language acquisition and not the effects.

Research Directions

Despite this evidence, the major focus of current research is to continue to search for ways to demonstrate the effectiveness of the skill-building approach, a desperate search, in my view. There has been little interest in seeing the effects of increasing the quality and quantity of comprehensible input, even though many pay lip-service to the value of comprehensible input, claiming to support the "comprehensible input + supplementation" position. As a result of this negligence, I suspect that we have not even come close to tapping the potential of comprehensible input.

Why is this true? I discuss here only two of the possible reasons.

The ruthless capitalist argument

It could be the case that researchers are defending their own economic interests. They continue to search for a role for grammar not because they believe in it but because they have sold out to big publishers who make profits from grammar-based materials. I have no evidence that scholars have been deliberately dishonest, but the potential for conflict of interest exists.

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