He said he understood it, though his love of logic and argument sometimes annoyed his mother. Thus, it occurred to me that my son was confirming Krashen's theory of vocabulary acquisition through reading. I have living proof of this hypothesis in my son. I agree with Krashen that high school students should be encouraged to read lighter things faster and in greater quantity, but in practice teachers go painfully slowly over materials that are too difficult. Their defense is that if they did not familiarize the students with difficult passages, the students would panic when confronted with actual entrance examinations, some of which are ridiculously difficult.
Teachers just translate, students only listen.
It is not at all unusual that of forty students in one class, more than thirty never speak or read an English sentence even once during a fifty-minute class. This is a lecture in puzzle-solving strategies rather than a language class. I hate to admit it, but I was one of those teachers who thought this way. I am now determined to improve my teaching by reducing translation to a minimum and increasing student-centered activities such as reading aloud, listening comprehension, dictation, and discussion in pairs or small groups. Krashen further asserts that massive quantities of pleasure reading in the students' own area of interest may be the best way to prepare foreign language students for the serious study of literature.