ABSTRACT
Knowledge of a student's background allows you to tailor instruction to meet his or her needs, and it is, therefore, helpful to know some basic concepts about the structure of a student's native language. Student grammar errors are often a result of language transfer. For instance, in Spanish a student would say, “No me gusta nada que escribo” or literally, “I do not like nothing that I write.” Native language patterns of syntax, such as placing the negative particle before the verb and using double negatives, standard in Spanish, will often transfer into students' attempts to speak English. Sound patterns may also transfer. For instance, many English words that begin with an “s” sound that is followed by a consonant, such as “school” and “ski,” begin with an “e” in Spanish, so it is not uncommon to hear native Spanish speakers say “eschool” and “eski.” Language arts teachers are not required to know the underlying concepts of language structures of multiple languages, but many of these structures can be discovered through a close analysis of students' written and spoken language. Systematic errors can be detected just as they would for a native speaker.
