minimal pairs voicing / devoicing - black sheep press · minimal pairs voicing/devoicing. devised...

MINIMAL PAIRSVOICING/DEVOICING

Devised and illustrated by Helen Rippon, Highly Specialist SLT.

PIP6SECOND EDITION

www.blacksheeppress.co.uk

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Introduction

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 children with delayed or

disordered speech development.

Barlow and Geirut (Minimal Pair approaches to phonological remediation:

Seminars in Speech and Language 23(1) 57-67 2002) state that ‘all

phonological approaches focus on teaching children the function of sounds,

particularly that changing sounds, changes meaning, and that making

meaning is necessary to communication.’

Thus, this pack of 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!’

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 Minimal Pairs series can be utilised to support

these approaches.

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

This pack focuses on Voicing/devoicing: 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’. Similarly, /t/ and /d/; /k/ and /g/; /f/

and /v/ etc.

4PIP6-2, Minimal Pairs, Voicing/devoicing, second edition © 2018 Helen Rippon, Black Sheep Press Ltd. Black Sheep Press, 67, Middleton, Cowling, Keighley, W. Yorks, BD22 0DQ, England. Tel. +44 (0)1535 631346; email: [email protected] ; web: www.blacksheeppress.co.uk

It is only permitted for the licensee shown below to print/photocopy these worksheets for use in their clinic/school. See page 3 for full details of the licence conditions.



When a child exhibits problems with voicing or devoicing, he or she will use

voice on voiceless sounds, or devoice voiced sounds.

Examples: ‘tie’ = ‘die’; ‘back’ = ‘pack’.

This is an unusual error process which is usually associated with disordered

speech development.

Activities

Before beginning, please note:

For most of the activities it will be necessary to have two identical copies of

the pictures being used to enable you to provide immediate feedback to the

child on whether they have selected the correct word, or have said a word

correctly, thus highlighting the importance of meaning.

You will need to check that the child understands the words to be used

within the minimal pairs activity. Inevitably, in an effort to provide as many

pairs as possible, it is sometimes necessary to use words that may not be in

a young child’s vocabulary. Only use pairs of words that you know the child

understands.

All these games should be fun and all corrections carried out with good

humour. If the child appears uncomfortable, or distressed, stop the game

immediately.

Hunting and hiding

Have two identical sets of pictures. Place one set of pictures around the room.

Keep the other set in your hand so the child is unable to see which pictures

you are looking at. Now ask the child to, for example, ‘Find the … pie.’

The child runs around the room until he finds the picture of ‘pie’ and brings

it back to the table. Show the child the picture you were looking at. ‘Good

listening! You found the pie. It’s the same picture I was looking at! Now find

the bear.’ Continue until the child has found all the pictures.

Now, and this is the most important part of the game, repeat the activity,

but the child now becomes the teacher. If the child is looking at the picture

of ‘buy’, but says ‘pie’, you MUST go and retrieve the picture of ‘pie’ so that

when the child reveals the picture he/she was looking at you can say ‘Oh!

You told me to fetch pie ... but you were looking at BUY! We need to say them

differently don’t we.’ etc.







pig

pear

pea

pie

big

bear

bee

buy





pen

pat

pull

push bush

Ben

bat

bull



minimal pairs voicing / devoicing - black sheep press · minimal pairs voicing/devoicing. devised...

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