10 Fun Short and Long Vowels Practice Activities
Alex Case
Short and long vowel distinctions like “bit” vs “beat” can be tricky for language learners and need a lot of practice. Luckily there are many suitable stimulating controlled and more communicative activities, ten of which are explained below. For ideas on what to present about this topic and how to present it, see How to Teach Short and Long Vowel Sounds.
Short and long vowels simplest responses/ stations
Students listen to a short vowel or to a long vowel and race to show which they think they heard by raising cards (which say “Short” and “Long”, have a colon or are blank, etc). If you don’t want to use cards, the game can also be played by them raising one of their two hands, making gestures to represent long and short, pointing at the colon and no colon on the board, running to one of two walls, etc.
Short and long vowels journeys
This idea from the classic book Pronunciation Games is like a less hectic version of the game above. Make a kind of tree that branches and branches again, into two branches, and then four, eight, and finally 16 branches. Then write something such as a different city name at the end of each branch to represent where students end up.
Starting where it just splits into two, students take the left branch if they hear a long vowel or the right branch if they hear a short vowel, continuing until they reach one of the sixteen places at the end of the tree. They then say what is written there (e.g. “London”) to see if they took the correct branch each time.
For an easier task, the same game can also be played with the words written on each branch, e.g. with “bot” and “bought” written on the first two branches.
After finishing your versions of the game, groups of students could test each other in the same way and/ or make similar lists of minimal pairs to test other groups with.
Short and long vowels error correction
Students listen to and/ or read sentences that include mistakes related to the length of vowels like “Can you change the shits on my bed?” and try to find and correct the errors (preferably ones like this which are funny but common in real life). If you then give them a list of similar possible confusions, they could then work in groups to make similar wrong sentences to test other groups with.
Short and long vowels pairwork dictation
Choose some minimal pairs with short and long vowels like “cot” and “caught” and put one of the words in a sentence which doesn’t make sense with the other word, like “I was a little late but I caught the next train”. Make around 12 sentences per worksheet, with the key words underlined. One student dictates all of the underlined words to their partner, then goes through the list again to read the words in context so their partner can check if they wrote the right things. They then compare what was written with the original sentences, and go through the pronunciation of any which they got wrong.
If you made two or more versions of the worksheet, they can change roles and do the same the other way around.
Short and long vowels pelmanism
Make a pack of cards which have one one-syllable word on each, with about 50% having words with short vowel sounds and 50% having words with long vowels. Students spread the cards out over the table and take turns trying to find two cards which both have long vowels or two cards which both have short vowels. If this will be too easy with written words, you can use pictures (of “cream”, “glove”, etc), in which case any word which could be represented by that picture is okay. The game is more challenging and fun with the cards face down (as pelmanism/ pairs/ the memory game is usually played).
Short and long vowels storytelling
Students take turns continuing a story with a word with a short vowel, then a word with a long vowel, then a word with a short vowel, etc (also using any other words they want to each time). This can be done with cards with useful one-syllable words for telling stories (“wood”, “prince”, etc), with a similar list on the board or a worksheet, or just with their own ideas.
Short and long vowel coin activities
Students flip a coin to see if they should use a word with a long vowel (heads) or a word with a short vowel (tails). This can be used in the storytelling above, to try to make true statements about their partner, or to make questions from those words.
Short and long vowels hangman
This is based on the common spelling game Hangman, but with more emphasis than usual on pronunciation. One student secretly chooses a word with a long vowel sound or a word with a short vowel sound. They write one gap for each letter like normal hangman, but then also give a hint about the pronunciation by writing a colon above (to indicate a long vowel sound) or by writing a crossed-out colon above (to show that a short vowel is needed). The other student or students guess the letters like normal hangman and/ or guess the actual sounds (depending on what rules you want to give them). You could also tell them that they have to start by guessing the vowel sound before they are allowed to guess the other parts.
To add more communication, you could also allow or encourage hints like “It’s in this room” and “It’s an animal”.
Short and long vowels guessing game
One student secretly chooses a single-syllable word and gives hints starting with “It has a long/ short vowel sound” and “The vowel sound is…” until their partner guesses which word they chose. Almost any other kind of hint is then okay, such as “It’s a verb” and “It’s a positive word”.
Short and long vowels strangers on a train
Give students cards with different minimal pairs like “fit/ feet” and “had/ hard”. Students try to use both of the words in one of those minimal pairs somewhere in the same conversation (not necessarily near each other). They then get points for using both words without their partner spotting which they used, and get points for spotting which minimal pair their partner used.
