Teaching Voiced and Unvoiced
Sounds to ESL Students

The concept of voiced and unvoiced sounds is extremely useful for teaching pronunciation to ESL students and EFL students. This concept comes from the field of phonetics. It's particularly useful for –ed endings, words ending with an "s," and words spelled with "th." Teaching adults the idea of voiced and unvoiced sounds will also be helpful for b/p, f/v, k/g, etc. The correct pronunciation of these letters can be achieved by determining whether the sound is voiced or unvoiced.

Teaching Voiced Sounds to ESL Students

Essentially, a "voiced" sound, or "voicing," means that we feel a vibration when we pronounce the sound. The vibration is from our vocal chords. The way I teach voicing to ESL students is by asking them to put two or three fingers gently against their throat and then make a sound. If they feel a vibration, the sound is voiced.

Teaching Unvoiced (or Voiceless) Sounds to ESL Students

Unvoiced sounds are also called "voiceless" sounds. You can probably guess that an unvoiced sound is the exact opposite of a voiced sound. When you put your fingers against your throat and make a sound, if you don't feel a vibration, then the sound (or letter) is unvoiced.

When I work with ESL adult students, sometimes they are self-conscious about doing the physical exercise of putting their fingers against their throats and making a strange sound. I have to model the physical behavior and then I have to encourage them to continue to put their fingers to their throats to hear the voiced or unvoiced sounds.

Sometimes, students won't feel the vibration of a voiced sound (or they will feel it when they are making a voiceless sound, or are they unsure of whether they feel a vibration or not), so I have to make sure that they are making the sound correctly (correct lip and tongue position, etc.). I use Pronunciation Pairs: An Introductory Course for Students of English by Ann Baker and Sharon Goldstein to show the correct placement. The drawings are clear and so are the descriptions and exercises.



After the ESL student is able to feel the vibration, or not, the next challenge is encouraging the student to continue to put their fingers to their throats while we determine whether the list of words we're working on has voiced or unvoiced sounds.

This pronunciation technique is particularly useful for English past tense pronunciation. When I teach lessons to ESL students on how to pronounce regular Simple Past tense verbs (those ending with "-ed"), I first teach the concept of voiced and unvoiced sounds, then move into Simple Past tense pronunciation practice.

In later lessons on pronunciation, I often come back to the concept of voiced or unvoiced sounds, so I find that it's helpful to teach this practice early in our classes together.

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