Minimal Pairs ~ Exercises in Pronunciation

Simply stated, singular sounds in a language are called phonemes which can be vowels, consonants or combinations of vowels and consonants (see the transcription key at the bottom of this page). Morphemes are meaningful words or parts of words (unbelievable has three morphemes ~ “un”, “believe” and “able”). As you can see, a morpheme can be a word (“believe”) or a part of a word (“un” or “able”). In this way, phonemes (the various vowel and consonant sounds) make up morphemes, and morphemes make up words (“unbelievable”).

Words also have stress in English. For example, be-LIEV-a-ble has a medium/strong stress on the second syllable and weaker stress on the other three syllables. Corrective feedback is an effective means to bring a learner’s attention to proper word stress at the beginner level. When a teacher models a word slowly and correctly, the student is given the opportunity to notice their error(s) and to reproduce an utterance that others can comprehend. The audio format of these activities will also assist in modeling correct forms.

The activities in the minimal pairs activities deal with phonemes and morphemes that are challenging for second language learners. Additionally, there are sentences that present the morphemes in context.