Mei faced a more complicated situation. She tried to say thanks but the teacher heard it as sex. Mei’s teacher counselor wanted to inform her parents that their adolescent daughter might be getting herself into trouble. For Mei, three pronunciation issues converged in one word. First, the /th/ sound does not exist in Chinese, as is true for the first language of most ELLs (Avery & Ehrlich, 1992, p.104). Consequently, Mei could neither hear nor say the /th/. As a Chiinese speaker, she automatically used the sound /s/ to substitute for /th/. Secondly, the vowel sound /ae/ in thanks also does not exist in Chinese. Mei used the closest sound in her Chinese repertoire, one similar to the vowel sound in bet (p. 118). Third, as with many other languages, “Chinese has no consonant clusters” (p. 117). Mei pronounced the last two consonants of the triple cluster /nks/ in thanks. In doing so, she ended up saying something similar to sex, which was her interlanguage bridge to the target sounds in thanks. Interlanguage “is the version of English an ELL speaks” during the language learning process (Freeman & Freeman, 2001, p. 71). Despite her effort to pronounce thanks. An important yet difficult word, Mei was punished. Instead, she should have been reassured and encouraged.