Comprehension vs. Skill Building

Quote from SusanOhanian.Org:

The Comprehension Hypothesis is supported by a substantial amount of research. This research contains an interesting result: When studies compare students given a "comprehension" approach (lots of meaningful reading) with those who are given skills, the readers not only do better on tests of reading comprehension, they also do just as well on tests of skills! (Krashen, 1999). This pulls the rug out from under the argument that skills need to be drilled and that they need to come first.

The same result is true in second language acquisition research. Those who are provided with more comprehensible input in second and foreign language classes do better on all tests related to real communication. On grammar tests, there is usually no difference between the groups, and occasionally the comprehensible input students actually do better (Krashen, 1994a).