Articulation Skill Explainer
4. How to Teach Articulation: Consonant Pairs
| Voiced Sound | Voiceless Sound | Name and Description |
|---|---|---|
| /b/ | /p/ | These sounds are called Lip Poppers. To make them, your lips come together and then pop open with a burst of air. They are stop sounds. |
| /v/ | /f/ | These sounds are called Lip Biters. To make them, your lower lip is curled in and the top teeth go over the bottom lip. A steady stream of air is released. They are continuous sounds. |
| /th/ | /th/ | These sounds are called Tongue Biters. To make them, your top teeth bite down on the tongue and the tongue comes out. Air is pushed around the tongue. They are continuous sounds. |
| /d/ | /t/ | These sounds are called Tongue Tappers. To make them, your mouth is partly open and the tongue taps the ridge behind the top teeth. They are stop sounds. |
| /z/ | /s/ | These sounds are called Tongue in the Cage. To make them, your lips are wide and slightly apart. The teeth stay together; the tongue is encaged behind them. They are continuous sounds. |
| /zh/ | /sh/ | These sounds are called Long Lip Pushers. To make them, your lips pucker and push out air. They are continuous sounds. |
| /j/ | /ch/ | These sounds are called Quick Lip Pushers. To make them, your lips pucker quickly and the tongue taps the roof of the mouth. They are stop sounds. |
| /g/ | /k/ | These sounds are called Throat Sounds. To make them, your mouth is open and the back of the tongue touches the back of the mouth near the throat. They are stop sounds. |
| /w/ | /wh/ | These sounds are called Lip Rounders. To make them, your lips purse in a circular shape and push out air. They are continuous sounds. |
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Louisa Moats: I had a second grader writing sample this morning and I use the second grade writing sample a lot. This student was writing a list of words ... bed, ship, drive ... and the word drive was spelled 'd'-'a'-'f' ... 'd'-'a'-'f'. So, what I would hope the teacher would be able to do is here, this student was referred for a fluency problem in reading, right? So what does the spelling tell us? It tells us that the student has fuzzy phonology. And what do we mean by that scientific term? It means that what is registering in the student's mind as the constituents of the spoken word — the elements of the spoken word — is a little out of focus because the student wrote an 'f' for the final sound /v/. The difference between 'f' and 'v', or the difference between /f/, the sound, and /v/, the sound is simply voicing ... what we call voicing. Your mouth is doing the same thing when you say /f/ and when you say /v/ ... the teeth are on the bottom lip. The difference is when you say /v/ as on the end of drive, there's a little buzz in the vocal cords that we call voicing. So it's very logical that ... if the student has what we call a somewhat degraded internal image, if you will, of the spoken word in their mental dictionaries, that they're going to make errors like that in spelling. And it's perfectly transparent to me. The student has not differentiated the finer differences in the speech sounds that are very much alike. So, /f/ and /v/ are a pair. There are nine other pairs of consonants in English that have that same difference of voicing, only voicing ... everything else that the mouth does is the same. /t/, /d/, for example. So if you see that in spelling, it means you need to put a phoneme awareness activity into the code base lesson that requires the student to listen for those differences in those two sounds.
So ... can start with ... are these words the same or different ... fat, vat? And then you get to life, live. And what's the difference between the sounds? You can't just stop with are they the same or different? You have to say, what's the difference? And you can't get to what's the difference unless, in the first place, you've taught the student the identity of the sound. And that's where those speech-sound charts come in. You have to have already identified there is such a thing as /v/, there is such a thing as /f/ ... these two sounds look alike and feel alike. And the difference is what your vocal cords are and are not doing when you make these sounds. So you establish that concept, practice it, relate it to the print, and then look for those errors to disappear with sufficient practice.
