If we agree with Krashen that comprehensible input is all about teaching so that we allow our students to learn the language we teach them unconsciously, that is, without any conscious control of what sticks in their minds (that being a hugely complex process that cannot be accomplished merely by the incapable conscious mind) then we need to accept the idea that the deeper mind, the whole mind, the mind that acquires languages (vs. the conscious mind, which is too weak), then it really is like the action on our whole minds of a net of i + 1 vocabulary that we are ready to acquire, as per the Net Hyposthesis (see https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/12/dr-krashen/)
I was just talking to my TPRS brother Eugene today and we thought that this problem of how to present vocabulary to students is actually like a butterfly net. We swing the net into a gaggle of butterflies, a few butterflies go in, many do not, and which words go in to our minds as acquired vocabulary is completely up to the unconscious mind, which picks out what it wants to keep and tosses out what it doesn’t, every night as we sleep, this process occurring at night when we sleep not when we are awake, as it goes through everything it heard in the TL that day and keeps only those butterflies that it is ready to acquire.
The unconscious mind decides, we don’t. That’s how it works, in my opinion based on what I understand Dr. Krashen to be suggesting. We really need to get over ourselves in that respect. We think we can present vocabulary lists and such and, once we have TPRrd them or presented them in some way, having “covered” or “taught” them, then the kids will have them.
This is not true. That is why I keep referring back to blog posts here like these:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/05/16/we-focus-on-the-water/
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/05/17/get-out-of-the-way/