Homophones are words that share the same pronunciation regardless of spelling (e.g., missed-mist, peak-peek, rays-raise, tolled-told)
Homophones can be useful in helping students overcome the interference they experience from spelling. For instance, to illustrate that -ed can be pronounced as /t/, an instructor might present the homophone pair missed-mist to provide a point of comparison. These examples have an advantage over other examples because they focus the student on pronunciation and away from spelling.
Pairs like days-daze, doze-does (i.e., female deer), grays-graze, gays-gaze, Oohs-ooze, pries-prize, and sighs-size can help focus students on the pronuncition of final -s as /z/ in spite of its spelling. This comparative techniquw can be effective when adding /s/ produces another new word. For example, when presented the word lose, students can be encouraged to compare the word to the two other words with different pronunciations: Lou's and loose. This allows them to discover (in spite of spelling) that lose is closer to Lou's than to loose. Other comparative trios include: Brews-bruise-Bruce, Grays-graze-grace. These triads offer opportunities for instructors to ask, "Which word is pronounced like grays? Graze or Grace?" While the student may have initially thought to cue the word with a final /s/, the contrast of graze and grace provides two clear points of comparison to show that grays is likely to end with a /z/.
Students commonly request to their CS instructors, "Tell me what I say."
Case: A student in a class suggests that she uses a "soft 'z'" and that her /z/ is so much softer than the instructors that it should therefore be cued as an /s/. The problem, again, is that we must not compare how one person sounds compared to another. The student must compare her /z/ to other sounds she makes. The instructor used a homophone pair to give her the answer. "Do you pronounce ice and eyes the same way?" The student replied that she pronounces the words differently. This tells the instructor that while the student may have a soft /z/, it is still a /z/. Since she has a distinction between /s/ and /z/ she needs to cue that distinction no matter how soft or strong her version of each.
In parts of the Western U.S., like Utah, a vowel merger has occured and the distinction between / / and / / has been lost. The use of honophones can be useful in a class to suss out which students will use the chin placement for / / and which will not. For example, by offering pairs like cot-caught, rot-wrought, knotty-naughty, stalker-stocker, the instructor can ask students, "Are these words pronounced the same or differently?" For students from the mid-Atlantic region for example, these words will be pronounced differently. For cuers from Utah, Idaho, and parts of California, they might be pronounced the same.
Mary-merry-marry