The Sound/Colour Chart
The English Sound/Colour Chart, created by the late educator Caleb Gattegno, is a 57 cm. by 42 cm. wall chart with 58 coloured rectangles. Thirty-seven of the rectangles are of one color, representing a single sound in English, and 21 are of two, representing two sounds. The vowels are placed above a line nearly halfway down the chart, and the consonants are placed below this line. The two-colored rectangles are divided horizontally and are read from top to bottom. Thus, the color for the /a/ phoneme is placed above the color for the /y/ phoneme to create a white/light pink rectangle for the diphthong found in “high.” On the consonant side of the chart, the sound made by “qu” in words such as “quite” is made up of a single rectangle whose top half is the color for /k/ and bottom the color for /w/.
The Sound/Colour Chart is part of a larger system, which includes the Fidel and the Word Charts. The Fidel for English is a set of eight wall charts with lists of spellings for each of the rectangles on the Sound/Colour Chart, coloured the same way as the rectangle. The /aı/ rectangle, for example, is represented by a list of 12 spellings, each coloured white on top and light pink on bottom. The 12 Word Charts represent a functional vocabulary of English. The words on these charts are printed in colours corresponding to the other charts, indicating their pronunciation. The word “my,” for example, is printed with an orange “m” and a white/light pink “y.”
The choice of colours in this system is largely arbitrary, but sharply contrasting or very similar colours seem to have been selected to contrast or show similarities between sounds. For example, the colours for /i/, /ı/, and /y/ are, respectively, red, pink, and light pink. The /u/ in “too,” in contrast, is dark green. The system is not entirely consistent, however, probably because of the difficulty in assigning a limited number of commercially reproducible colours to so many sounds to represent such a complex system of relationships. In addition to showing relationships among the sounds, some individual colours seem to have been chosen for other reasons, for example the bright shade of yellow chosen to represent the schwa, perhaps to highlight this important sound so central to English pronunciation (Moyer, 1977).
The Sound/Color Chart is used to engage students in a variety of games to help them work on pronunciation at all levels, from individual sounds to connected speech. These games will be described later in further detail, but a brief summary of the rules or conventions for the games is as follows: 1) when the teacher or a student taps a rectangle with a pointer, the sound(s) for that rectangle is/are uttered by the students; 2) when several rectangles are tapped in succession, the sounds are uttered in that order, usually forming a word or a sentence; 3) a brief pause or lowering of the pointer indicates a break between words or the end of a sentence; 4) stress may be indicated by tapping one rectangle more forcefully than the others; 5) phrasing may be indicated by tapping a series of rectangles very quickly, or once a sentence has been introduced with the chart, the teacher can use her fingers to represent the words in the sentence, placing fingers together where the words link or separating them where there should be a pause. Individual teachers will of course devise their own rules, conventions and gestures to use in addition to these.
The English Sound/Colour Chart, created by the late educator Caleb Gattegno, is a 57 cm. by 42 cm. wall chart with 58 coloured rectangles. Thirty-seven of the rectangles are of one color, representing a single sound in English, and 21 are of two, representing two sounds. The vowels are placed above a line nearly halfway down the chart, and the consonants are placed below this line. The two-colored rectangles are divided horizontally and are read from top to bottom. Thus, the color for the /a/ phoneme is placed above the color for the /y/ phoneme to create a white/light pink rectangle for the diphthong found in “high.” On the consonant side of the chart, the sound made by “qu” in words such as “quite” is made up of a single rectangle whose top half is the color for /k/ and bottom the color for /w/.
The Sound/Colour Chart is part of a larger system, which includes the Fidel and the Word Charts. The Fidel for English is a set of eight wall charts with lists of spellings for each of the rectangles on the Sound/Colour Chart, coloured the same way as the rectangle. The /aı/ rectangle, for example, is represented by a list of 12 spellings, each coloured white on top and light pink on bottom. The 12 Word Charts represent a functional vocabulary of English. The words on these charts are printed in colours corresponding to the other charts, indicating their pronunciation. The word “my,” for example, is printed with an orange “m” and a white/light pink “y.”
The choice of colours in this system is largely arbitrary, but sharply contrasting or very similar colours seem to have been selected to contrast or show similarities between sounds. For example, the colours for /i/, /ı/, and /y/ are, respectively, red, pink, and light pink. The /u/ in “too,” in contrast, is dark green. The system is not entirely consistent, however, probably because of the difficulty in assigning a limited number of commercially reproducible colours to so many sounds to represent such a complex system of relationships. In addition to showing relationships among the sounds, some individual colours seem to have been chosen for other reasons, for example the bright shade of yellow chosen to represent the schwa, perhaps to highlight this important sound so central to English pronunciation (Moyer, 1977).
The Sound/Color Chart is used to engage students in a variety of games to help them work on pronunciation at all levels, from individual sounds to connected speech. These games will be described later in further detail, but a brief summary of the rules or conventions for the games is as follows: 1) when the teacher or a student taps a rectangle with a pointer, the sound(s) for that rectangle is/are uttered by the students; 2) when several rectangles are tapped in succession, the sounds are uttered in that order, usually forming a word or a sentence; 3) a brief pause or lowering of the pointer indicates a break between words or the end of a sentence; 4) stress may be indicated by tapping one rectangle more forcefully than the others; 5) phrasing may be indicated by tapping a series of rectangles very quickly, or once a sentence has been introduced with the chart, the teacher can use her fingers to represent the words in the sentence, placing fingers together where the words link or separating them where there should be a pause. Individual teachers will of course devise their own rules, conventions and gestures to use in addition to these.
