Pronunciation

I love teaching pronunciation so much! Minimal pairs practise especially always seems to motivate my students, and weak forms in connected speech are fun too. Here are some ideas.

Click here for lots more worksheets, activities and games to practise pronunciation of particular phonemes (sounds) such as long vowels, or spellings such as ch.

A minimal pair is a pair of words which differ only in one sound. They are a great way to help your students become more aware of their difficulties with pronunciation. For example, Spanish students often struggle with the minimal pairs "sheet" and "seat", or "cat" and "cut". They can really improve their pronunciation by practising these pairs.

Click here to see a selection of ideas to practise minimal pairs (words which differ in only one sound, such as "cat" and "cut"). If you want some sets of word pairs to use with the activities look at the minimal pairs lists page.