Author: British Council | Published on 1 September 2022
English isn’t a phonetic language. This means that the same letters can be pronounced differently, and that different letters can make the same sound.
This activity is about raising awareness and practising sounds. For example, ‘bed’ and ‘said’ have different letters, but the same sound /e/. While ‘women’ and ‘move’ have the same letter, but different sounds /ɪ/ and /u:/.
In this activity, learners need to think about which of the underlined letters in the words have the same sound and then put those words in the same group. If possible, they should also write the sound.
For example:
Which of these words have the same sound?
four
hair
plane
poor
prey
rain
roar
there
wear
Here are some more words that can be used.
/u:/ blue, flew, shoe
/i:/ team, key, field
/j/ jump, age, soldier
/j/ yet, onion, use
/s/ city, soon, listen
/e/ bread, said, friend