Knowing Your Students Cultural Background

As an educator it is always beneficial to have some background on your students to understand them better.  Knowing students cultural background and areas in language that may be difficult in advance can help you prepare lessons and activities for your ELL students.  Michael Swan & Bernard Smith have written a book entitled  Learner English  A teacher's guide to interference and other problems.  It is a wonderful resource for cultural insight and common language errors.  This book is available on-line.  It provides background on 23 different languages and information on phonology, the influence on pronunciation, orthography, grammar and culture.  A wonderful resource!