AndyMeg is right in that I do need a lot of input - and preferably varied input.
I mentioned before in my log that I feel there is a breadth of material suitable for beginners, but then perhaps a shortage of appropriate material for that 'upper beginner' stage. The way I dealt with that deficiency was to work through TTMIK Iyagi series, even though it was at the time a bit too advanced for me, and now I feel I am crossing that area.
In terms of my reading ability I think I'm breaking into an intermediate stage and now the selection of material I can work through is starting to open up again. I'm reading articles I had tackled last year which now, while still not easy, are at least intelligible. I can follow whats being said even if there are still a fair number of unknown words.
So now I am mostly restricted by the time I spend on reading, not really feeling there is any shortage of material I can tackle.
Of 6 - 7 hours per week, 3 hours-ish is spent listening, an hour or more on writing which leaves usually about 2 - 3 hours of reading. During my reading time I spend a portion of it re-reading older texts. It means I don't cover new material at the same rate as I did last year. Last year I might have spent twice as much time each week reading new material as I do now.
While I could allocate more time to input related activities (especially reading), I don't think it would be beneficial if it means the other activities decrease. I do believe input to be extremely important, but not as much as I did last year.
Some observations which have lead me to this:
* My own self-review at end of last year indicated I was still making very elementary mistakes despite the volume of input (suggesting input was either not correcting this or at least indicating it would take an unreasonable amount of input to do so)
* I observe my wife and her friends as people who live immersed in an English speaking country, are married or dating English speaking people, consume their news in English and have done so for many years (in my wifes case over a decade of full immersion). They still make some very elementary grammatical mistakes which native speakers do not make.
So I draw the conclusion that vocabulary can be learnt by massive input, and clearly it must aid grammar. However pronunciation, accent, prosody of speech, and grammar are only *aided* by massive input. It would seem to me, by the examples I have around me, that correcting the latter must be a conscious effort.
The conscious effort must include practice (output) in which the learner identifies the mistakes either by their own volition or having the mistake identified by someone else. The learner then needs to try again, looking to intentionally correct the mistake - over time making it more and more natural. Of course substantial amounts of input help an attentive learner self-correct if they are looking to do so.
This is my conclusion at this juncture
In addition it has become similarly apparent to me that the brain seems capable of having two tracks: one for understanding input and one that is slightly disjoint from that for generating output.
So while substantial listening will help my speaking, I no longer believe the point of view that with sufficient input one can simply be immersed for 2 weeks and 'unlock' the passive vocabulary resulting in free or fluent speech.
I think that I need to 'train' the aforementioned 'output track' of my brain by practiced output.
My current conjecture is that the path to proficiency is paved with: 2/3rds input and 1/3rd output to ensure the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar while also building the ability to use that vocabulary and grammar correctly.