betrofent and shubert

Husband and I try to be sensitive to our students' limited command of English. Specifically, we are much more lenient about correct spelling than we would be with native speakers. Call it "dumbing down" if you want, but the fact is that learning to spell "Scheherazade" is not how I'd like my students to spend their time.

So when I give listening tests (in which students must identify music by title and composer, based on a one-minute excerpt that I play on the stereo), I expect a little "creative spelling." I tell them that I have to be able to understand what they mean, and that they have to try to spell the whole word. (The first time I gave this sort of test, I didn't specify this, and for "Rimsky-Korsakov," I got Ri---unintelligible scribble---. Not acceptable.)

Usually I get results like "Simphonie" for "Symphony," and considering that this is a word that is spelled "Symphonie" in French music and "Sinfonia" in Italian music, I figure that's pretty close.

Last time I gave the test, though, I got the most creative spelling yet: "Betrofent."

Can you guess what that means?

Yep. Beethoven.

I gave the student credit, because it was clear that he could identify the music, which was the point of the test. I'm not totally comfortable with this, because I would never give an American student this kind of leeway, but considering that even the alphabet is foreign to these students, I'm not going to change the policy.

Recently Husband gave a listening test. Many of his students answered "Shubert" or "Shuber." I'd bet he would have accepted this if the correct answer had been "Schubert." Unfortunately it was "Schoenberg." No luck for students this time, although the names do sound quite similar.