Voicing/devoicing – Minimal Pairs

Description

A useful resource bank of pictures illustrating common phonological processes, in this case voiced/voiceless, which can be used to make games and activities.

A minimal pair is a pair of words, such as ‘tea’ and ‘key’, or ‘four’ and ‘door’, differing only by one sound in the same position in each word. Minimal
pair therapies are an essential and common method used by speech and language therapists to correct error patterns in the speech development of children.

Minimal pairs can be used to develop games and activities to directly confront the child with the consequences of his/her error pattern in terms of meaning. For example, if a child says ‘That’s a funny nail’ (when looking at a picture of a snail), the adult may respond ‘A funny nail?? I can’t see a funny nail anywhere … but I can see a funny snail!’

For more information see below.

Ref: PIP6-2 Download Sample

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This Minimal Pairs pack focuses on voicing/devoicing: when speech sounds are paired in terms of placement of articulation but are differentiated by whether the sound is voiced or voiceless. For example, /p/ and /b/ are produced with exactly the same mouth position, but /p/ is voiceless and /b/ is voiced, which makes the differentiation between ‘pea’ and ‘bee’.

The Minimal Pairs Voicing/Devoicing pack is an essential resource for working on phonological processes with children up to KS2.

A comprehensive bank of minimal pairs, which can be used to make games and activities.

Speech and Language therapists use minimal pairs therapy as an essential element of their practise, to develop a child’s awareness of an error pattern in their speech sound system.

The Voicing/devoicing pack includes a range of fun activities including:

  • hunting and hiding
  • where’s the sticker
  • picture lotto and picture pairs
  • which one am I talking about
  • jump along

Additional minimal pairs, and sentences which contain minimal pairs, are included in this pack.  Some children who have severe difficulties with phonological processing and speech production will require a greater number of activities before outcomes are achieved.  For this reason, speech and language therapists may find it helpful to have access to a more extensive bank of minimal pairs, particularly when working with older pupils (6 years+).  Similarly, sentences containing minimal pairs can be used to highlight the importance of word production in relation to the meaning of a sentence 

Each pack in our Pairs in Pictures (PIP) minimal pairs series focuses on a particular phonological process and provides minimal pairs of that particular process in initial, medial and final position:

PIP 1: Fronting/Backing, Gliding
PIP 2: Stopping
PIP 3: Consonant Deletion
PIP 4: Cluster Reduction /s/
PIP 5: Cluster Reduction /l/ and /r/
PIP 6: Voicing/devoicing

Caroline Bowen offers excellent information on her website (speech-language-therapy.com) on minimal pair therapies which clearly describes the varying approaches that can be used by therapists, and again, the picture resources provided in our Pairs in Pictures series can be utilised to support these approaches.

Aim: Use to develop sound awareness skills; help children identify process contrasts, minimal pairs therapy.

Age Range: Foundation Stage – KS1+, 4years – 7years+.

Format: PDF file, 5 pages of introduction and instructions, 14 pages of colour illustrations with black and white duplicates. Available as a download

Snippets: Upgrade your account to send specially selected extracts of this resource, via our website, to parents and carers for homework exercises. The snippets for this resource include colour illustrations and the following:

  • A series of coloured pictures which can be copied and made into lotto games and matching pairs games.
  • A ‘which one am I talking about’ activity, where the child needs to find the picture that the adult describes. For example, ‘this lives in my garden. It is black and yellow, flies and makes honey. It can sting.’

Additional information

Development Age

3 to 5 years, 5 to 7 years