Back to Minimal Pairs Exercises

Listening discrimination: /ɪ/ and /iː/

Listen for the difference between the vowel in ship /ɪ/ and the vowel in sheep /iː/. Use your recordings to practise, compare and test yourself.

Stage 1: Meet the words

Listen to each word and look at its spelling. You can replay it at normal speed or more slowly. Use Compare pair to hear both words one after the other.

Pair 1 of 10
Word 1
pull

Word 2
pool

Choose a playback button to listen.

Pair 1 of 10

Teacher's note

The HTML expects the recordings to be in a folder named sounds beside this file. Filenames must match the list in the code. “Play slowly” uses slower playback of the same recording; it may slightly change the sound quality.

Your word list contains twenty contrasting pairs. Record each distinct word once; repeated words can reuse their recordings.