The role of context in understanding conversation and reading material is often not considered sufficiently, in my opinion. Which is why students struggle so to learn and retain Greek vocab. taught by the Grammar-Translation method. It's taught without sufficient context.
Yes, that starts to address why aural input is so important for reading. Aural input increases speed, one of the items that is crucial for good reading. It also builds the phonological loop, another item that is part of the cognitive process of READING. Yes, even Chinese reading has a pre-cognitive phonological loop in the reading processing from visual symbol to understanding. That last point is the iceberg lurking under the surface for ancient grammar translation that assumes, without awareness of the psycholoinguistic research, that aural facility is irrelevant when the goal is simply reading. In fact, the opposite is true-- no aural input, no good reading.
