If you’re always on the lookout for fun, interactive pronunciation activities, then I’m sure you’re familiar with the brilliant work of Mark Hancock, and if so, then you might already know about this fantastic free resource on minimal pairs that he recently released. If not, let us tell you about it…
What are minimal pairs?
Well, these are pairs of words that consist of exactly the same sounds… apart from one! For example, walk and work, or bees and peas. When looking for minimal pairs, it’s important to remember that we are dealing with sounds and not spellings; the words might look rather different in terms of how they’re spelt, but when spoken, there is only one differing sound.
Examples:
Work /ˈwɜːk/
Walk /ˈwɔːk/
Bees /ˈbiːz/
Peas /ˈpiːz/
Why teach minimal pairs?
Focusing on minimal pairs can be a great way of helping your learners to work on sounds that they find particularly challenging, possibly because these sounds don’t exist in their first language (L1) and so they are unfamiliar. When this is the case, typically, learners will instead use the closest possible sound that they are familiar with, but this can lead to confusion and can often change the meaning of the word. Think about the phrase ‘It’s important to work every day’. There are many languages that don’t have the /ɜː/ sound found in ‘work’, and speakers of those languages may find themselves pronouncing this word as /’wɔːk/ or /ˈwɒk/, which could be mistaken for the word ‘walk’. This would of course change the meaning of the phrase, and so helping our learners to differentiate between similar sounds and learn new sounds will help with both their speaking and listening skills, leading to fewer misunderstandings.
How can I teach minimal pairs?
The first step is to identify which sounds your students struggle with, before selecting some minimal pairs that feature these sounds. These can be presented in two columns on the board, and it’s a good idea to choose words that are the same word class (e.g. 2 adjectives, 2 verbs etc.) Let’s use the vowel sounds /ɜː/ and /ɔː/ from above as an example.
A/ɜː/ |
B/ɔː/ |
| work | walk |
| bird | board |
| firm | form |
| shirts | shorts |
| expert | export |
We can start by working at word level, with the teacher saying a word from either column A or column B, and students have to identify which column the word is in. They can do this by standing up if they think it’s column A, or pointing to the left, or writing ‘A’ in their notebooks. At this stage, they are simply trying to hear the difference between the two vowel sounds. They can then work on producing the sounds by doing this same activity in pairs or groups; one student says a word, the other students identify the correct column. This will need close monitoring during the activity, as if students disagree, there could be a couple of reasons for this; either the pronunciation of the word wasn’t quite accurate, or the issue was with the ability to hear the correct vowel sound.
How can I move beyond individual words?
This is where Mark Hancock’s fantastic materials come into play! There are 50 sets of ‘Pair Squares’ to choose from, and these AI-generated picture cards are designed for A2 level and above. They come in sets of 4 and are a really fun way to engage your learners, focusing on a range of different minimal pairs. As before, you can start by having the teacher read out one of the four sentences, and learners have to select the correct image. After this, learners can repeat the activity in pairs or groups to have a go at practising the pronunciation. Here’s a ‘pair square’ of our own that we made, inspired by the above resource.
Great! Are there are any other activities I can do?
We’re glad you asked, because Mark Hancock’s materials have given us an idea for another fun activity, which could be done as an extension task! Remember the table of minimal pairs we looked at earlier? How about getting your learners to make some silly sentences, using a combination of words from each column? For example, ‘An expert in shorts works on a bird’. They should write 2 or 3 sentences but keep these secret from their partner. When they have finished writing their sentences, they read them out to their partner who has to listen and draw what they hear. Not only is this fun, but it gives learners the chance to work on those communicative skills, as well as their pronunciation.
Why don’t you give it a go and let us know how you get on!
If you enjoyed this post, you’ll love our online teacher training course, Helping Students with Pronunciation. Check it out here >
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