A Forgotten Debate About Comprehensible Input

By Beniko Mason

In 1999, Contee Seely and Blaine Ray published a commentary on Jeff McQuillan and Lucy Tse's article, "What's the Story? Using the Narrative Approach in Beginning Language Classrooms." Looking back more than twenty-five years later, this exchange deserves renewed attention because it reveals two fundamentally different interpretations of Krashen's Input Hypothesis that continue to shape language teaching today.

At first glance, the two groups appeared to share the same theoretical foundation. Both cited Krashen's Input Hypothesis, emphasized the importance of comprehensible input and a low-anxiety environment, and shared the goal of promoting language acquisition. However, their understanding of these concepts differed in important ways.

Preteach the Words, or Let Understanding Build?

Seely and Ray argued that vocabulary should be thoroughly pretaught before storytelling and that teachers should conduct frequent systematic comprehension checks throughout the lesson. In their view, learners first needed to understand individual vocabulary items before they could successfully understand the story. They further argued that vocabulary comprehension should become nearly instantaneous, thereby facilitating the later stages of acquisition.

McQuillan and Tse disagreed. They argued that stories can be made comprehensible without isolated vocabulary instruction by using appropriate teacher support, such as gestures, visuals, and intonation. They drew on the work of Elley (1989) and Hudson (1982) to support their position. More importantly, they emphasized that vocabulary acquisition is incidental and incremental. Learners gradually acquire vocabulary while focusing on understanding meaningful stories, gaining a little more understanding with each encounter in context. They also argued that frequent comprehension checks interrupt the natural flow of storytelling and are unnecessary when teachers carefully observe learners' responses and adjust their storytelling accordingly.

Two Different Theories of Acquisition

This disagreement was not simply about teaching techniques. It reflected two different conceptions of language acquisition. One assumed that learners first needed to establish conscious knowledge of vocabulary and verify comprehension before they could benefit fully from meaningful input. McQuillan and Tse, in contrast, argued that acquisition develops gradually through understanding meaningful messages, with vocabulary being acquired incidentally and incrementally through repeated encounters in meaningful contexts.

The Question That Was Left Unanswered

McQuillan and Tse's response represented an important application of the Input Hypothesis to storytelling. It nevertheless left an important pedagogical question unanswered. If vocabulary is acquired incidentally and incrementally, how does the teacher actually make stories comprehensible not only for beginning learners but also for learners at different levels of proficiency? What kinds of support are needed, and how should that support evolve as learners and stories become increasingly sophisticated?

From Open Question to CAS

These questions eventually led to the more explicit formulation of Comprehension-Aiding Supplementation (CAS) (Krashen, Mason, & Smith, 2018). CAS is the pedagogical principle by which teachers create Optimal Input while preserving the continuous flow of meaningful communication.

From the earliest stages of Story-Listening, teachers may combine both non-linguistic and linguistic supplementation according to learners' needs. Gestures, drawings, facial expressions, simple explanations, synonyms, antonyms, paraphrases, repetition, and other forms of support all serve the same purpose: helping learners construct the intended meaning without interrupting the flow of the story.

As learners become more proficient and stories become more sophisticated, the nature of the comprehension challenge changes. Learners may understand every sentence and still fail to construct the author's intended meaning. They may need help connecting events, inferring motives, understanding relationships, appreciating cultural assumptions, or interpreting meanings that are implied rather than explicitly stated. These observations led to the development of Narrative CAS, an extension of the same pedagogical principle to literary and other sophisticated narratives.

Why This Still Matters

Seen from this perspective, the 1999 exchange represents more than a disagreement over classroom procedures. It marks an early stage in an ongoing effort to understand how teachers create Optimal Input. McQuillan and Tse argued persuasively against vocabulary preteaching and systematic comprehension checks as necessary conditions for acquisition. CAS extends this line of inquiry by providing a more explicit account of how teachers adapt linguistic and non-linguistic supplementation to learners' changing comprehension needs while preserving the continuous flow of meaningful communication (Krashen & Mason, 2019a, 2019b, 2020).

The complete 1999 exchange remains well worth reading. It reminds us that important questions about comprehensible input, vocabulary teaching, and the teacher's role were already being actively debated more than twenty-five years ago. Those questions remain highly relevant today.

Beniko Mason is the creator of Story-Listening and the author of What If Input Is Enough?

References
Elley, W. (1989). Vocabulary acquisition through listening to stories. Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 174–187.
Hudson, T. (1982). The effects of induced schemata on the "short circuit" in L2 reading: Non-decoding factors in L2 reading performance. Language Learning, 32, 1–31.
Krashen, S., Mason, B., & Smith, K. (2018). Some new terminology: Comprehension-aiding supplementation and form-focusing supplementation. Language Learning and Teaching, 60(6), 12–13.
Krashen, S., & Mason, B. (2019a). A note on comprehension checking. Journal of English Language Teaching, 61(1), 23–24.
Krashen, S., & Mason, B. (2019b). Direct teaching of vocabulary? Journal of English Language Teaching, 61(1), 9–13.
Krashen, S., & Mason, B. (2020). The optimal input hypothesis: Not all comprehensible input is of equal value. CATESOL Newsletter (May).
McQuillan, J., & Tse, L. (1998). What's the story? Using the narrative approach in beginning language classrooms. TESOL Journal, 7(4), 18–23.
Seely, C., & Ray, B. (1999). Comments on Jeff McQuillan's and Lucy Tse's "What's the Story? Using the Narrative Approach in Beginning Language Classrooms." [citation cuts off in source — needs completing before publishing]