Four teachers huddle around a set of word cards. They've been told by their instructor to organize the words into categories according to the stressed vowel sound, such that the word go would be placed alongside sew, grow, and home. They are to sort fifty-six words into fourteen categories, four words per category. The task seems simple enough.

The American moves four cards into place: book, could, put, and woman. Satisfied with his contribution, he sits back.

“Woman doesn’t belong in the same box as the others,” the Australian asserts, and the teacher from New Zealand agrees. The American waits, unsure how to respond.

The instructor, Gemma, offers perspective: "this word, woman, has a WOODEN HOOK vowel sound in North America, but in other regions including my own, it sounds like BLUE MOON."

WOODEN HOOK woman vs. BLUE MOON woman. Can they both be right? 

So begins another round of the Color Vowel® Level 1 Practicum, an intensive four-week experience during which English teachers from around the world gain fresh perspectives on their own accents while experiencing, in some way, what it feels like to be an English learner. 

“It’s very interesting how we all speak English, but the way we pronounce things are slightly different," the Australian reflects. "I can see why students who might have an Australian teacher or an American teacher may have different experiences.” 

And yet it's just one language right? English. Or it is perhaps more of a countable noun: Englishes, as in my English, your English, our Englishes? If we recognize that there is more than one right way to speak, what can we do to teach English in a way that is both specific yet varied? Firm yet flexible?

The Color Vowel® Chart provides us with a common language for exploring questions like these.  Each live session of the Level 1 Practicum ends with a brief reflection. In the videos that follow below, teachers share their 'a-ha' moments or whatever they find especially thought-provoking. 

Video Reflections (Part 1)

Being trained with the Commonwealth Color Vowel® Chart was, for one American teacher, "a really powerful experience, taking on the role of a learner or someone who doesn’t naturally know what the sound should sound like." 

The Problem with Conventional Pronunciation Teaching

“If you look back at the history of teaching English pronunciation, many textbooks, training courses, and [methodologies] focus on either Standard Southern British English or American English,” Gemma explains. “These accents do not reflect the vast majority of English speakers–even within the UK and US,” leading to a widespread belief that only two English accents are 'correct,' when in reality, English is spoken in many diverse varieties and accents around the world. How a person speaks is shaped by numerous factors including region, first language, gender, socio-economic status, race, and ethnicity. 

In pronunciation teaching, the two-accent paradigm has created pernicious challenges for learners and teachers. Surrounded by prescriptive notions of correct pronunciation, Native and non-native speakers alike are socialized to 'reduce' or 'eliminate' their accents, undermining the larger task at hand: namely, building learners' English proficiency, communicating effectively, and speaking confidently.

From Skeptic to Champion

Gemma Archer was all too familiar with the notion that her way of speaking English was less than. When she first began teaching, she found herself on the outside of an unmarked divide: Born and raised in Scotland, Gemma was constantly reminded that her English was unlike the English that was positioned as the 'correct' standard.

“I would pick out the sounds and IPA symbols that existed in my English, Scottish Standard English, and teach only those,” she confessed, "and I avoided teaching vowel sounds altogether because many of the vowel sounds in the textbooks were not my own.”

These early experiences are evident in Gemma's professional activities today. As joint coordinator of IATEFL’s Pronunciation special interest group (PronSIG) and co-author of the book Teaching English Pronunciation for a Global World (2024), Gemma Archer is a leader and a sought-out speaker in the field of second language pronunciation pedagogy and accent. Having seen English learners react negatively when faced having to learn more than one variety of English, Gemma created The Scottish Sound School, a resource that helps new arrivals acclimate to the unfamiliar sounds of Scottish speech.

Upon seeing the Color Vowel® Chart for the first time, Gemma recalls feeling doubtful. "I assumed it was just another pronunciation tool that I wouldn't be able to use because of my accent."  Despite her well-won skepticism, Gemma enrolled in Color Vowel Basics with the Level 1 Practicum and soon found herself thinking differently. 

Over the next four weeks, Gemma and her cohort were introduced to a series of multi-modal strategies that boost phonological awareness for the English teacher as much as for their learners.  Before the end of the second week, conventional attachments to so-called 'long,' 'short' and 'other' vowels give way to a more functional and accurate understanding of moving and non-moving vowels, and the widely bemoaned complexity of R-controlled vowels is delivered with unprecedented clarity. 

A particular R-controlled vowel kept calling Gemma's attention: the sound in star, guitar, and Gemma's own last name, Archer. While her classmates easily classified these words as OLIVE SOCK with a movement to PURPLE SHIRT, Gemma couldn't ignore her own strong sense that these words had no match on the Color Vowel Chart. 

It was at this moment that her instructor, anticipating Gemma's dilemma, presented her with an alternative: The Commonwealth Color Vowel® Chart. There, a small modification made the Chart work for Gemma. Where OLIVE SOCK once resided, she now found TOMATO CART, and it was a good fit indeed. Gemma now had a category for these previously tricky words: TOMATO CART, star, guitar, Archer. OLIVE BOTTLE and AUBURN FAWN, each of them produced further back in the mouth than their American correlates, complete the palette of Commonwealth vowels, providing the same benefits as the original North American chart while recognizing key distinctions in low-mid and low-back vowel sounds. 

Gemma felt more comfortable with the Commonwealth chart. More importantly, she found that this more accommodating Chart helped her students bridge the gap between the English they learned in the classroom and the English they encountered in real-world conversations both in Scotland and online. "It opened up the world.” 

TWO Color Vowel® Charts

The Color Vowel® Chart was created in 1999 by Karen Taylor and further developed with Shirley Thompson while both were teaching at universities in the Washington DC area. Just as Gemma had selected and taught the sounds that resonated with her own English, Karen created the original Color Vowel Chart as a mirror of her own Western U.S. accent, with OLIVE SOCK serving as a single category representing the cot-cought low back vowel merger. Within a few years, and with input from Shirley and others, a second version of the Chart emerged featuring the low-back vowel /ɔ/  , now easily referred to as AUBURN DOG. In 2019, the two versions were merged and published as a single, accent-inclusive, Color Vowel® Chart representing North American English (5th Edition). 

The need for a Commonwealth Color Vowel® Chart was evident early on. Conversations with British, South African, and Australian speakers of English revealed time and again an undeniable mismatch between words like "auburn" and "dog" that, in North American English, feature the same vowel sound. A prototype was developed and circulated to select teachers in 2014, and a fully designed Commonwealth Color Vowel® Chart was published in 2021.

Gemma has found that utilizing both Charts together also helped her students navigate what they hear in the vast array of movies, shows, and media that feature a North American English accent. “I feel comfortable making that comparison between accents because of the anchor phrases,” she explains. “I can pronounce a word in North American English if a student is curious.” Whether working with one or both Charts, teachers find that teaching with the Color Vowel® Approach helps them talk about different accents with ease, serving as an expressive shorthand for complicated explanations. 

Video Reflections (Part 2)

From Teacher to Color Vowel® Trainer

Now a Level 3 Trainer, Gemma considers the Color Vowel® Chart an essential tool for promoting accent equity and with it, the idea that learners can focus their efforts on intelligibility and effective communication instead of chasing the notion of accent nativeness. 

As Gemma puts it, “the Chart is not prescriptive. It’s a tool. Regardless of teachers’ accents or variety of English, it is a way to describe our own English and compare it with others. The Color Vowel® Chart is a perfect tool that is simple and enables us to celebrate, compare, describe, and explore accents.”

Video Reflections (Part 3)

Color Vowel's Level 1 Practicum is designed for discovery. "We've graduated sixty-eight cohorts with Level 1 Certification, and we learn something new with every participant. The course is already so well designed, but it just keeps getting better," explains Karen Taylor, co-author of the Color Vowel® Chart and founder of English Language Training Solutions. 

"Participants come for the Chart, but by the time their four-week course comes to a close, they find themselves equipped with much more than a poster or a tool kit," she adds. What they receive has been described by many as "mind blowing"  in their video exit tickets. "A game changer," is a common refrain shared by many. Encountering a variety of accents and developing a new appreciation for English language diversity undoubtedly contribute to the win. 

A new round of Color Vowel® Level 1 Practicum starts each month. Whether taught by Gemma Archer or one of her Level 3 trained colleagues, the Practicum will help you:

• Gain a solid foundation of the principles of the Color Vowel® Approach;
• Learn practical techniques for integrating the Chart into various teaching contexts;
• Join a community of educators from around the world who share teaching strategies and insights;
• Build confidence to innovate and improve students’ pronunciation, stress, intonation, and comprehension.

Questions about the Level 1 Practicum may be directed to customersupport@colorvowel.com 

Visit our international RedBubble Shop to purchase a Color Vowel® Chart that speaks to you.