PronPack: The Minimal Pair Collection

PronPack is an award-winning collection resource books to help teachers focus on English pronunciation in class. The Minimal Pair Collectionprovides teachers with a complete bank of ideas and material for focusing on English phonemes and phoneme contrasts. Rather than prescribing a single target model, the book takes a distinctive, ‘accent-friendly’ approach which recognises and accepts the varieties of English around the world today.

The main body of The Minimal Pair Collection consists of four sections. Section A is background reading, explaining the accent-friendly approach and key concepts in the book. Section B includes collections of minimal pairs gathered together in groups. Section C outlines the various game-types which can be used with the minimal pairs outlined in B. Section D is an extensive bank of resources and reference materials, including notes on the phonemic symbols used, an index of minimal pairs and lists of the materials available on the support website.

Section A contains 15 short chapters explaining the scope and approach of the book, why minimal pairs are so important in pronunciation teaching, and the practicalities of using minimal pairs in class. Reading this section straight through provides a complete overview. However, the tips are independent and self-contained so readers can also dip into them in any order they choose, as and when they feel the need.

Section B contains material about minimal pairs, gathered into 14 different groups. It includes notes about articulation and spelling, as well as innovative ‘accent-wise’ sections to help teachers decide which distinctions are essential for intelligibility and which are simply different accent alternatives.

Section C contains detailed teaching notes for five activity and game types which can be used with the minimal pair lists introduced in Section B. For each game, one example is given in the text, while extensive alternative versions are to be found on the support website.

Section D includes useful lists and indexes of the materials to be found in the book, notes about the phonemic symbols used, an extensive glossary of terms, and other reference material.

The other books in the PronPack collection are:

PronPack 1: Pronunciation Workouts – a collection of extended choral drill activities.

PronPack 2: Pronunciation Puzzles – a collection of puzzles and game-like activities.

PronPack 3: Pronunciation Pairworks – a collection of communicative practice activities.

PronPack 4: Pronunciation Poems – a collection of poems, raps and chants to highlight different pronunciation points.

PronPack 5: Pronunciation of English for Spanish Speakers – a collection of activities working on the kinds of difficulties experienced by Spanish-speaking learners.

PronPack 6: Pronunciation of English for Brazilian Learners - a collection of activities working on the kinds of difficulties experienced by learners whose first language is Brazilian Portuguese.

PronPack: Connected Speech for Listeners – background tips plus lesson ideas and materials for teaching English connected speech, with a focus on improving listening fluency.

PronPack: Word recognition for Listeners - background tips plus lesson ideas and materials to help learners develop their ability to recognise words in the spoken form, including a focus on word stress and affixation.