System that works, and one that doesn't

... it is enough to hear and understand the target language. ..., one way to do this is to learners with a steady diet of listening and reading comprehension activities with no (or very few) oppotunities to speak or interact with the teacher or other learners in the classroom
-- Lightbown & Spada "How Language are Learned"

If you have learned about Second Language Acquistion, you may have heard about Steven Krashen (not Stevie Wonder!). He proposed "i + 1," which had a great influence on second language teaching. In this wacky term, "i" means the learner's current level of competence. According to Krashen, if the input the learner receives has forms and structures just beyond "i," s/he will understand and acquire them.

Why have I been mentioning this? Because some of the teaching methods used at my school are based on Krashen's ideas. For example, in reading class, students are encouraged to read as many graded readers as possible. This type of reading activity is called "pleasure reading," which is supported in Japan too, especially by people like Kunihide Sakai.

Personally, I'm not supporting Steven Krashen that much. However, if you encourage students to do pleasure reading, you have got to understand why it is thought to work and to be able to explain the effect of pleasure reading to students. The school is making a mistake regarding this point. Whenever a system works, people who use this need to rely on the system. Like the strategies used for soccer and baseball games, language teachers and students need to rely on new system to get it to work well.