What are some effective ways to teach voiced and unvoiced sounds in English?

As stated above, a good way to teach the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds is by asking students to place their hands on the throat/neck and asking them to feel a vibration. I personally prefer to use the sounds /s/ and /z/ to demonstrate the difference between a voiced sound and an unvoiced sound.

There is no way to beat Ivan's tip of getting students to feel the vibration in their throat. All I can add is that I have a specific hand movement to go with /s/ (like a snake slithering) and another for /z/ (like a bee flying around randomly) to remind them which sound they should make in a comparison exercise.

Teaching voiced and unvoiced sounds in English can be challenging, but there are effective strategies you can use to help students differentiate and produce these sounds accurately. Visual Cues: Use visual cues to help students understand the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds. For example, you can place your hand on your throat when producing a voiced sound to show the vibration, while keeping your hand away from your throat for unvoiced sounds. Example: When teaching the "s" sound, demonstrate the difference between the voiced "z" sound (as in "buzz") and the unvoiced "s" sound (as in "bus"). Show students how the vocal cords vibrate for the "z" sound but not for the "s" sound.

Minimal Pairs: Provide students with minimal pairs, which are pairs of words that differ by only one sound, either voiced or unvoiced. Practice these pairs to help students hear and produce the distinction between the two sounds. Example: Practice minimal pairs like "bat" (unvoiced) and "bad" (voiced), or "sip" (unvoiced) and "zip" (voiced). Have students listen carefully and repeat the words, focusing on the difference in voicing.

There are various ways to practise voiced and unvoiced sounds depending on the minimal pair, for example the plosives /b/ and /p/ can be practised with a piece of paper in front of the mouth, with the voice the /b/ hardly moves the paper, but without the voice the /p/ will blow the paper and make it move. This can a fun simple exercise. If you don't have paper, putting your hand in front of your mouth you can feel the force of your breath - it'll be much stronger for the unvoiced plosives.

Tongue Placement: Teach students the correct tongue placement for producing voiced and unvoiced sounds. Emphasize the position of the tongue, teeth, and lips to help students understand how to articulate the sounds correctly. Example: When teaching the "th" sounds, demonstrate the difference between the voiced "th" sound (as in "this") and the unvoiced "th" sound (as in "think"). Show students how the tongue is placed between the teeth for both sounds, but the vocal cords vibrate for the voiced sound.

Getting feedback is crucial so that students know if they're managing to make the voiced and/or unvoiced sound (I find that making the voiced sound is the trickiest for my Spanish speaking students of English, they have less voiced consonants). If a peer or teacher isn't there to help, AI can give feedback. Ask the student to say a word to Siri/Alexa/Google Assistant and see if it repeats the same word/the voice-to-text function produces the same word. This works with minimal pairs - will GoogleAssistant pull up images of "Sue" or "zoo"? This depends on if the student successfully used voice for this sibilant...

Sentence Practice: Provide students with sentence-level practice to reinforce the distinction between voiced and unvoiced sounds in context. Use sentences that contain words with these sounds and have students read them aloud or engage in conversation. Example: Create sentences like "She sells seashells by the seashore" or "The big blue bus is buzzing with people." Encourage students to focus on the correct voicing of the sounds as they speak the sentences.

I can add that the reinforcement of voiced and unvoiced sounds forms best if single sounds are paid attention to and practiced along with the other slices of the phonology cake: word stress, rhythm, stress timing, intonation and of course features of connected speech — teaching the whole pronunciation. Together they are all the pieces of one system which generatively help one another establish and grow if all work at the same time. This way, we also bring more meaningfulness to the focus we give to single sounds, as in the real life through listening and speaking sounds are not usually considered to be effective language chunks independent of words, sentences and meaning.

Listening Activities: Incorporate listening activities that highlight the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds. Use audio recordings or videos that feature native speakers producing these sounds, and have students identify and differentiate between them. Example: Play audio clips or videos that include words with voiced and unvoiced sounds, and ask students to listen and identify which sounds they hear. This helps develop their listening skills and reinforces their understanding of the sounds.