Ship or Sheep

An EnglishClub Site of the Month (May 2015)

shiporsheep.com

Ship or Sheep is a useful website for practising pronunciation. This site focuses solely on minimal pairs. Minimal pairs are words that vary by a single sound. On this very simple site, you can listen to minimal pairs for many different sounds. First click on a pair from the chart on the homepage. Then mouse over the words to hear them. You will hear male and female voices in British English.

The pairs also have pictures in case you aren’t familiar with the vocabulary. As you study minimal pairs, you can also learn the IPA symbols. This will help you understand the pronunciation of a word that you find in a dictionary. To use this site, you will need audio and Flash.

shiporsheep.com

3 comments

• Philip says:
  

  I come from Vietnam. I want to learn English better

• Another Sue says:
  

  shiporsheep was a great concept, but it appears not to be supported now. It still references using Flash, but Flash is no longer available. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to hear the words anymore.

• Sue Olive says:
  

  Useful but limited. More examples needed. More pictures needed for students with a different alphabet. More high surrender words, not so Western culturally.