Single sounds

The simplest search is for words containing a single sound that you want to practice, either a vowel or a consonant. To do this, use either Sequence or Sounds mode. When searching for a single sound, these will give the same results. (Rhotic vowels like ɑɹ are considered two sounds, so make sure to use Sequence mode if you’re looking for a combination like this.)

Switching vocab levels

Setting the vocabulary level on Advanced will return the most results, but for many people, even advanced English users, it can be helpful to start on Beginner or Intermediate in order to focus your practice on more common words at first.

Consecutive sounds

Consonant clusters (two or more consonants in a row) are common targets. Use Sequence mode and enter two or more IPA symbols to search for a sequence. You could search for common consonant clusters (e.g., fl, stɹ), rare ones (e.g., gw, lθ), sequences of vowels (e.g., iᵻ, aɪɑ), or vowel + r combinations (e.g., ɑɹ, ɔɪɚ).

Facilitative contexts

When searching for consecutive sounds for my students, I’m usually looking for challenging combinations, but in some situations it can be helpful to find contexts that make a target sound easier, sometimes called facilitative contexts in speech therapy. For example, a student may be struggling with the ɹ sound but find it easier when it comes after t or d. In this situation, you can search for tɹ and dɹ to get some momentum with ɹ before moving on to harder combinations.

Initial and final sounds

Sometimes a sound is particularly tricky at the start or end of a word. Use Starts with and Ends with modes to focus on these contexts. For example, you can practice words that start with ð (the hardest th context for many learners) or words that end in s (an easy sound to drop for some students).

Target-error sound pairs

Sometimes a target sound is especially challenging in words with certain other sounds nearby, but not necessarily consecutive. Often these sounds are ones that the speaker is accidentally substituting for the target sound. For example, some learners substitute s for θ (e.g., saying sink instead of think). For many of them, words that contain both θ and s will be much harder than other words with θ. In these cases, try using Sounds mode and search for the pair of sounds (the order doesn’t matter). By searching θs or sθ in this mode, for example, you can find challenging practice words like thanks, south, and thirsty.

Multiple targets

While it’s often helpful to focus on one target sound or group of related sounds during different parts of a practice session, you may also want to combine different challenging sounds in the same practice, especially as you get more comfortable with these sounds. For example, if you’re working separately on the consonant v and the rhotic vowel ɚ, you can use Sounds mode to find words that contain both of them (like adventure, overlap, and verb) and efficiently practice them together. You can even go beyond two targets, like searching æɑlɹ for a students working on those four sounds, returning challenging practice words like anthropology and problematic.