Often the way students
spell words is directly connected to the way that they
pronounce the words. In this case, a German-speaking student could not hear the difference between the unvoiced and voiced final consonants, '
p' and '
b.' Consequently, the title of the student's essay unintentionally created the image of dog poop when she had been carefully observing a crab. Although German does have most of the same consonants as English, when the voiced consonants come at the end of a word, they are often cut short so that a 'd' sounds nearly identical to a 't'. The more that you know about the language background of your students, the better you can anticipate some of their errors.
Often the way students spell words is directly connected to the way that they pronounce the words. In this case, a German-speaking student could not hear the difference between the unvoiced and voiced final consonants, 'p' and 'b.' Consequently, the title of the student's essay unintentionally created the image of dog poop when she had been carefully observing a crab. Although German does have most of the same consonants as English, when the voiced consonants come at the end of a word, they are often cut short so that a 'd' sounds nearly identical to a 't'. The more that you know about the language background of your students, the better you can anticipate some of their errors. 
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