How to teach final consonant clusters

The first thing to think about with final consonant clusters is if you want to teach them at all.

The main reason for doing so is that there are related minimal pairs students have difficultly distinguishing between (“knees”/ “needs”, “bands”/ “bans”). However, students find it so difficult to hear those differences because they are very slight, so in fast speech listeners are likely to use context much more than pronunciation to work out what is meant. This makes it very difficult to drill the pronunciation, as students need to avoid both pronouncing the sounds more clearly than is realistic, and making them completely disappear.

Another argument against teaching final consonant clusters is that, unlike initial consonant clusters, the consonant sounds often become even weaker or disappear due to the sounds in the next word. For example, “His hand is full” said quickly sounds like “His han dis full”, meaning there is no final -nd consonant cluster. Similarly, in “His fund didn’t pay out”, the final d in “fund” becomes imperceptible due to the “d” straight afterwards.

If you still think that dealing with final consonant clusters is a major and solvable problem for your students, you will need to do so both in single words and in context in order to show how they are usually pronounced and how context can help understand. It might also be worth starting with the easier topic of initial consonant clusters.

Common problems with final consonant clusters

As well as the problems specific to final consonants above, many students have the problem that their first language doesn’t have the same, or even any, consonant clusters. Such students often add extra vowel sounds and so extra syllables (“gifut” for “gift” and “colud” for “cold”) and/ or cut sounds out (“I don’t mine” for “I don’t mind”, etc). 

How to present final consonant clusters

It’s best to present final consonant clusters when they cause problems in class, especially when students miss sounds in listening and so write “risk” instead “risks” or “pass” not “past” (either as a natural part of the lesson or because you chose such a listening with tricky final consonant clusters in the answers). When the problem occurs, write the correct answer under A and what it was confused with under B, e.g. “A: passed, B: pass”. Then get students to shout out A and B as they listen for those and then other confusing minimal pairs, first from the teacher and then each other.

To present the pronunciation of final consonant clusters, build the words up sound by sound from the vowel sound, making sure that the number of syllables remain the same (“e” “en” “ench” “bench”).

How to practise final consonant clusters

Final consonant clusters simplest responses/ stations

Make a worksheet with words with final consonant clusters in the A column and words which sound similar in the B column. Students listen to the words, sometimes in context, and race to show which one they think they are hearing. This can be shouting out “A” or “B”, holding up cards, holding up one of their two hands, etc.

Final consonant clusters the same or different

This is similar to the activity above, but with homophones of the words with final consonant clusters, and maybe some homophones of the similar sounding words. Students listen to two of the words, sometimes in context, and indicate if they think they heard exactly the same sounds twice (because they heard “past” and “passed”) or not (“pass” and “past”).

Final consonants odd one out

This is similar to the activity above, but with students working out which one of three words sounds different (e.g. from “past pass passed”).

Related posts

• 10 fun activities for consonant clusters
• 10 consonant clusters games