Author: British Council | Published 2 January 2023
This activity is about raising awareness and practising sounds. It can be used to practise areas like past simple endings, plural endings or vowels where the same letters make a different sound.
For example: Which word has a different –ed ending sound? Why?
worked, walked, wanted, watched
Answer: wanted because the others end /t/ and wanted ends /ɪd/
For example: Which word has a different /s/ ending sound? Why?
notes, goes, knows, throws
Answer: notes because it ends /s/ and the other words end /z/
For example: In which word do the underlined letters have a different sound?
look, moon, foot, cook
Answer: moon because the sound is /u:/ and in the words the sound is /ʊ/.
You can practise this with learners whenever they learn new vocabulary. You can ask learners to create their own word groups to test their classmates.