Friday, December 19, 2008

ESOL Teacher Resources - Minimal Pairs for ESOL Students' Pronunciation (Part 3)

In Part 1 of this series of posts on Minimal Pairs, I shared minimal pairs exercises that practice consonant sounds in English. In Part 2 of this series, I shared minimal pairs exercises that practice vowel sounds in English. In this post, Part 3, I will share more minimal pairs exercises that can be used to practice murmur diphthongs and special vowel sounds.

Contrast the following sounds:
long and short vowels with r-controlled vowels
/ar/ with /er/
/or/ with /er/
/oo/ (as in “look”) with /oo/ (as in “zoo”)
Special vowel sounds
had hard
lad lard
bid bird
fist first
fen fern
pet pert
am arm
ham harm
con corn
sot sort
hut hurt
cussed cursed
cub curb
luck lurk
gill girl
gem germ
cave carve
stoke stork
far fur
shark shirk
star stir
hard heard
barn burn
heart hurt
cart Kurt
dart dirt
farm firm
park perk
for fur
store stir
born burn
short shirt
form firm
warm worm
torn turn
bored bird
court Kurt
pork perk
full fool
pull pool
skull school
look Luke
soot suit
wood wooed
could cooed
hood who’d
should shooed
crone crown
sit sight
fool foul
crowed crowd
calf cough
boot bout
hack hawk
frock frog
stack stalk
hat halt
suck sulk
nuke nook
wooed would 
soul soil
tack talk
laughed loft

Note: Information adapted from the Decoding Strategies for Literacy Development manual published by Reading Horizons.

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