The minimal pair approach – Although many children progress quickly through a vowel articulation program, some children respond more quickly using a phonological approach.  The minimal pair approach involves single contrastive pairings of the child’s error with the target sound. In this program the vowel ‘ir’ is contrasted with ‘or’ which most typically replaces ‘ir’.   As vocabulary restrictions prevent minimal pair practice at the CV (consonant-vowel) or VC (vowel-consonant) level, it is necessary to use CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words as minimal pairs.   It is recommended that some ‘ir’ words are not targeted in practice. This group of words should be retained as a probe for generalisation.