Minimal Pairs and How to Use Them

If you've been an SLP for any amount of time, or if you have a child in speech therapy, chances are that you've heard about minimal pairs. You might think, "What makes them minimal?" or "How could something called 'minimal' help with speech?" I happen to love using minimal pairs in therapy, and I'll show you why. 

The basics: minimal pairs are words that differ in only one phonological element (sound). Some examples are seat/sheet (initial sound) or back/bat (final sound).  Now, on to some reasons that I love them.

1. They're evidence-based
According to the venerable SLP gurus Barbara Hodson and Elaine Paden (1),  "the use of auditory bobardment, minimal pairs for semantic understanding of speech errors, and gradual multisensory cue fading improved children's overall speech intelligiblity. " In simple terms, that means that using a lot of sound repetitions for the student to listen to, along with minimal pairs and different cues (pointing to your own lips to show shape and use, verbally cuing where to place the articulators to make the sound, drawing pictures, tracing the sound as you say it, etc) help students sound more intelligible. 

2. They sneak in some rhyming practice
By definition, minimal pairs are words that differ in only one phonological element. So unless you're working on final consonants or final sounds, the words generally rhyme (torn/corn, tape/cape, seat/sheet, etc). I like to point this out when I'm working with kiddos to help them tune in to the sounds of the word. Sometimes I give older students multiple words and have them figure out which ones are the minimal pairs. We work on speech sounds AND phonological awareness, all at once! 

3. They're fun
There are a ton of fun activities targeting minimal pairs out there! You can also make your own using flash cards, although you need a lot of them. Some of my favorite activities are:

• My Minimal Pairs Smash Mats Bundle: my students LOVE using play dough in therapy, and this activity allows them to do so while working on minimal pairs. They can also use a dry erase marker, just to mix things up. There are sets for Fronting, Stopping, Gliding, Cluster Reduction, and Final Consonant Deletion. You can try out a free version here. 
• Vocalic R Minimal Pairs Sorting Activity from Kiwi Speech. My kiddos who are working on /r/ LOVE this! It is great for those students who can use /r/ at the beginning of words, but their vocalic /r/s all sound the same. I laminated these and used Velcro to make them reuseable. 
• Minimal Pairs for Fronting and Backing by Speech2U. Includes rebus activities, sentences, matching activities, and more! (You can try it out with an "S to F" version here)
• Grab 'N Go Phonological Processes from Live Love Speech. I love all of Kristine's Grab 'N Go books for their portability and effectiveness. This one targets Final Consonant Deletion, Fronting, Stopping, Gliding, and Cluster Reduction with minimal pair activities and more. 
• Candy Town Phonology from Jenna Rayburn. My kiddos LOVE the CandyLand game, and this packet works with it (*game not included). It has sets for Final Consonant Deletion, Fronting, Stopping, Cluster Reduction, and Multisyllabic words, and for each set, the double picture cards are minimal pairs.
• Minimal Pairs Activity for S and T FREEBIE from Activity Tailor. Includes Say and Sort, Say and Dab, and What Did You Hear? activities. 
• Minimal Pairs Interactive Book for Deaffrication by SLP Tree. A fun book with silly sentences, that targets that complex phonological process of deaffrication (substituting a fricative or stop sound like /s/ or /t/ for "ch" or "sh"). 
• Minimal Pairs for Fronting K and G Sounds from The Speech Chicks. Includes flash card with pictures and an auditory bombardment page. 

These are my favorite activities to target minimal pairs. Do you have any favorites to add? Tell me in the comments! ​

​References:

• Hodson, B.W., & Paden, E.P. (1981). Phonological processes which characterize unintelligible and intelligible speech in early childhood. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 46, 369-373.
• Barlow, J. A., and Gierut, J. A. (2002). Minimal pair approaches to phonological remediation. Seminars in Speech and Language, 23(1), 57-67
• Barbara Dodd, Sharon Crosbie, Beth McIntosh, Alison Holm, Cynthia Harvey, Maureen Liddy, Kylie Fontyne, Bernadette Pinchin & Helen Rigby (2009). The impact of selecting different contrasts in phonological therapy. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 10:5, 334-345, DOI: 10.1080/14417040701732590