| Spoken British English has 44 sounds, but there are only 26 letters in the alphabet for written English.
Helping students distinguish between similar sounds.
Some sounds may not exist in students' own languages. The teacher can help students distinguish between similar sounds by reading out pairs of words with only one difference between them. This exercise is called "minimal pairs".
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| Minimal pairs
The teacher reads out a mixture of words from a list which contain a common sound and the two contrasted sounds like:
law...raw lay....ray laze....rays liver.....river
Students have to raise their right hand when they hear "l" and their left hand when they hear "r".
This can also be done with the difficult sounds in the middle or at the end of the word like:
climb....crime file.....fire glass....grass
Helping students practice similar or new sounds.
The teacher writes a long list of contrasted words (minimal pairs) on the blackboard. Students work in pairs. Student A draws two columns in a notebook. The student writes "l" at the top of one column and "r'" at the top of the other. Student B chooses a selection of words from the board at random and reads them out to Student A, who has to write them down in the correct columns, e.g. "l" or "r". Students can then check each others' lists.
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