The purpose of this study was to investigate whether teaching English unfamiliar phonetic distinctions to Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (ELL) would impact their spelling of the corresponding graphemes. Eleven third graders in a Midwestern inner city school who were Spanish-speakers participated in 20 training sessions. The 20-lesson intervention treatment focused on auditory discrimination, word and sentence identification, and grapheme training of minimal pairs of words containing “d” and “th” (when representing the phoneme /ð/). The treatment consisted of exposing learners to strategically controlled listening exercises that required their active attention to the aural input and its assigned meaning (e.g., the concept of “wordy” versus that of “worthy,”) so they could differentiate between phonemes and learn the associated graphemes “d/th”. Analysis of the pre-post test data showed a significant improvement in students’ ability to spell words with the targeted sounds after 20 lessons. When the targeted sound was in initial position, students improved in all tasks, but minimal improvement was found when the targeted sound was in medial or final position. Recommendations for classroom teachers to incorporate similar interventions are included.