I heard the ultimate argument for comprehensible input the other day. I was talking with a teacher about how everything in languages is far beyond the control of the conscious mind and she told me that just that morning her daughter Genevieve had said to her:
“Mom, that’s outrageous! Mom, what does outrageous mean?”
In the first sentence the new big word was used correctly in a new setting by the unconscious mind. In the second sentence the conscious mind jumped in and, needing to know what the deeper mind already knew, asked for clarification.