As difficult as it is when you and another person are speaking to each other in two different languages, it’s much more difficult when you are speaking the same language but cannot understand each other due to pronunciation and regional accents. While I run into the former problem in my everyday struggles with speaking Korean, the latter problem is most common when I am helping my students with their English writing.
Today my students were writing a few sentences about their future plans. As I was walking around the classroom to help them, one of the girls called me over.
“Spelling…’liber’?” she asked.
“Liber?” I repeated, glancing at her paper for a clue as to what she meant. “What is ‘liber’?”
Janine Perri 