A common challenge among new cuers is deciding which handshape to use for words with digraph "th." In English, there are several different building blocks (phonemes) that can be represented by the letters "th."
Voiceless "th" {{θ}}
The voiceless "th" is found in words like thief, thorn,and both.
While hearing, native English speakers generally do not confuse the different pronunciations of "th" while speaking, they do have difficulty consciously perceiving which they are targetting in order to assign a cue handshape. So while they can say the right sound, they may not be sure which they are saying in a given word. These stduents are encouraged to feel their vocal cords and assess the "breathiness" of their production to help them decide which handshape to use.