Whats the truth about EL research?

With all the research floating around language acquisition, it is not hard to get lost in all the terminology. The comprehensible inputs, the froantloading, scaffolding, schema building, etc. There are many competing theories out there affirming that they have a unique approach for teaching ELD. However I have attended two different “trainings” in which the same example was used for different purposes.

You may be familiar with this example on reading comprehension:

The bogo also recognizes the need to invest more in cucio themselves, 40 percent of which now lack basic sumwalz. Ligachev said cucio for 28 million monos will be frazequack by the year 2010, and that capital expenditures in blocka will increase drastically.

In one case it was used to illustrate the fact that being able to answer a few questions about a specific topic does not translate to comprehension. At first, that made sense to me. Just because you can answer that “expenditures in blocka will increase drastically,” does not mean you understand what blocka are. There was a huge emphasis on getting the point across that explicitly teaching vocabulary in the ELD class is a must. “Frontload new and unknown vocabulary as much as possible,” they said.

In the second case, the same example was used to express the opposite, that you don’t need to spend time teaching isolated vocabulary, but rather focus on getting across the meaning of the overall passage. “Focus on the communicative function,” they said.
This was further emphasized arguing that the more students are exposed to words they don’t understand in context, the faster they will be able to determine what the unknown word is.

So, as a teacher whose job is to teach language, what interpretation do you accept, who is one to say one is more effective over the other? If there is a lesson to be learned from this anecdote, is to not be fooled into thinking there is just one right way to teach language. Learning a new language, after all is a never-ending process in which we all engage at in different levels. Stay open minded and don’t swear by just one system. Even though a teaching methodology might fit your needs, it may not meet your students’ so keep teaching, keep trying, keep learning.