Experimenting with sound/colour charts
in English and French
Roslyn YOUNG
Centre de Linguistique Appliquée
Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon
The sounds on both the French and the English sound/colour charts respect with only a very
few modifications the order in which the corresponding columns are presented on the
"Lecture en Couleurs" and "Words in Color" Fidel charts. These sound/colour charts were
designed for use with native speakers of French and English, but native speakers only need to
be able to recognise the sounds of their language as they are learning to read, whereas non
native speakers must learn to make the sounds. Therefore this layout presents several
disadvantages for language teachers.
A major disadvantage is that, quite logically, there are as many rectangles as there are
columns on the respective Fidels. However the job of the Fidel is not to represent the sounds
of the language, but the relationships between these sounds and the alphabet. Consequently,
the original sound/colour chart for both languages would be more correctly termed a
sound/colour/spelling chart. Such groups of sounds such as [ks] as in "taxi" or [gz] as in
"exam" are represented on the Fidel to take the letter "x" into account. From the strict point of
view of the sounds involved, they should be omitted. The problem is particularly acute in
English, where a good third of the rectangles on the sound/colour chart should be omitted.
A second disadvantage in the presentation of the sound/colour charts in their original forms is
that the order of placement of the rectangles on the charts was chosen for reasons arising out
of the teaching of reading rather than for reasons pertaining to language teaching.
As far as the French sound/colour chart is concerned, a further problem arises because, in
spite of the best efforts of the Académie Française, the language has evolved extremely
rapidly over the last thirty years, and the number of sounds in the language has risen. The
reason for this is the number of English words which have been introduced into French, and
while many of these new words are contested, others have put down roots and have been
happily adopted by the French. "Jazz", "match" and "camping" are good examples of some of
these new words.
Nearly fifteen years ago, a team of teachers in Besançon began reflecting on how best to
modify the English sound/colour chart so as to create a true sound/colour chart, in which each
of the sounds of English would be represented by one rectangle and no rectangle would
represent a sound/colour combination based on the spelling of the language. Since the team
working on the project contained speakers from both the North Americain and British
families of accents, and because these teachers were systematically working as teams of two
made up of one person from each family of accents, a compromise was finally reached in
which one rectangle, the white [a], was added so that both groups could work with the same
chart with relative ease. Experiments were launched in the mid eighties. The chart was
quickly found to be a significant improvement on the original. However, over the years many
adjustments were made until a very serviceable chart was produced about two years ago.
Experimentation is continuing however, since improvements are always possible.
Working towards a modified French sound/colour chart
The existence of the modified English chart, and the success it has met with in many
classrooms with many groups of students, led to work on a corresponding French chart. This
modified French sound/colour was first used at the beginning of the nineties in Japan where it
was immediately recognized as an improvement over the original. However its creation
involved two steps. Firstly it was necessary to decide which sounds to include, and this is
much more difficult in French than in English. And secondly, the rectangles had to be placed
on the chart.
Present-day French
At the end of the twentieth century, it can reasonably be argued that the French language can
best be represented by a sound/colour chart containing 18 vowels and 24 consonants.
This means that one vowel must be added to those on the original French sound/colour chart.
This vowel, the sound in the word "pâte", is present on all the Silent Way charts for French both the Fidel and the word charts -, but was omitted from all the Lecture en Couleurs charts,
and so from the sound/colour chart. It is true that native speakers learning to read can manage
without this sound. It is not very common in French, and words containing it can often be
shown with the white [a] rectangle. However, the sound has by no means disappeared from
modern French and is found in the speech of any speaker of good quality French. It is very
difficult to justify its absence from the sound/colour chart when this is used for the teaching of
French as a foreign language.
There are 20 consonants on the original chart of which 3 represent graphemes rather than
sounds. This leaves us with 17 consonant sounds, to which a further 5 must be added.
The first consonant sound to be added is the second sound of the word "lui", which is a semiconsonant. This is a very basic French sound, omitted from the word charts for La Lecture en
Couleurs because its vowel equivalent could be used in its place and this was found at the
time to be sufficiently precise for native speakers of the language. However, its absence
causes difficulties for non native speakers since in this case the natural syllabification of
French becomes irregular and unnecessary difficulties are thus created for the pronunciation
of the language. It becomes more difficult to help students into good quality, smooth
pronunciation of the language if this sound is not present.
Another sound omitted from La Lecture en Couleurs was [w]. This is a perfectly French
sound but its vowel equivalent was substituted for it. Here again, this might be considered a
satisfactory solution for native speakers, but interferes with learning for non native speakers.
It is a sound which is inherent in the language, even if some newly added words such as
"kiwi" also use it.
Other sounds to be included are the first sound in "jazz", the last in "match" and the last in
"camping". These sounds could certainly be omitted much more easily than the sounds
discussed in the previous paragraphs, because they simply add to the variety of the language
but do not influence it at a deeper level, as do the sounds discussed above. However, there
seems to be no good reason for deciding that certain sounds are somehow more "noble" than
others, simply because they have a longer history in the language, so that it was decided to
include these vowels in the French sound/colour chart.
Consequently, the modified sound/colour chart for French is made up of 42 rectangles, each
representing one sound or diphthong.
The placement of the rectangles on the French sound/colour chart
Once the number of sounds was established, the next problem was to find an intuitive
presentation of these sounds so that students would be guided in their exploration of the
sounds by the geography of the chart.
The original sound/colour chart was already ordered to a certain extent. Not only were the
vowels at the top of the chart and the consonants at the bottom, but the four nasal sounds were
situated together, and several other groups of sounds were side by side too. The "é" and "è"
sounds, the "o" and "ô" sounds and the "e", "eu" and "oeu" sounds were presented grouped.
However, the presentation on the original chart could not lead students to realise that the
French language has created a very interesting system of vowel modulation which, once they
have become aware of it, makes learning the vowels much easier. Rather than having 18
separate vowels, French can be shown to have just 6 basic vowels which are then subject to
two different influences, each of which can be worked on consciously and mastered.
The six basic vowels are those which appear in the home row, in the words "si", "clé", "paix",
"ta", "pâte" and "bord". These vowels are presented at the top of the chart, from left to right,
corresponding to front to back production.
The second group is derived from them by a process known as labialisation. Starting from the
exact position of the home vowel, the lips are strongly pursed and a new vowel results. Thus,
using labialization, the vowel in "si" becomes the vowel in "du", "clé" produces the vowel
sound in "bleu", the vowel in "paix" becomes the one in "seul", the vowel from "bord" yields
the sound in "beau". The sound in "sou", which is not related to a sound in the home row but
is labialized, is added to the end of the row.
Thus, rather than having to master all these sounds separately, the students can learn how to
labialise, and then apply labialisation to the sounds of the home row.
The neutral "e" is added under the sound in "feu", since they differ only in their energy
content.
The other process used by the French language to generate vowels is nasalisation. The vowel
in "clé" yields its nasal equivalent as in "main", the sound in "seul" yields its equivalent which
is the word "un", "beau" gives rise to its nasal sound, to be found in "bon" and a midway
position between the front "à" and back "â" gives the fourth nasal sound which is in the word
"pan". These relationships are materialized on the chart using the geographical positions of
the rectangles.
The vowels [oin] and [oi] are in the "ou" column, [oin] being in the nasal row as well.
si
du
clé
bleu
le
main
paix
seul
ta
un
pan
pâte
bord
beau
bon
sou
soi
soin
home row
labialised vowels
nasalised vowels
This presentation of the vowels gives the students an intuition into the types of movements
they must look for in order to produce the different vowel sounds of French. Instead of
looking for 18 different sounds, some of which are fiendishly similar to each other, they can
see how French has structured itself, and do the same with themselves.
The consonants have also been repositioned. It is obvious that not all consonants require the
same amounts of practice. We have never yet met a student who could not say [m], for
example. On the other hand, we have met hundreds who could not say the [r] sounds in
French. The teacher simply works with the students on a here and now basis depending on
their mistakes. There seems to be no good reason why the chart cannot therefore be organised
along phonetic principles. In French, this allows many possibilities. One, shown with short
words, would be:
ail
huile
vigne
watt
pas
but
ma
ta
dit
nous
les
coq
gaz
ring
rare
axe
exige
six
zut
cher
juge
feu
va
jazz
The sounds in the [il] of "ail" and the [w] of "oui" are placed at the top of the consonants,
directly under their vowel equivalents, [i] and [ou]. The consonant [u] in "lui" is also placed
directly under its vowel equivalent, the sound in "du" The consonants are arranged in vertical
groups of two, voiced and unvoiced. The plosives [p], [t], [k] and [b], [d] and [g] are grouped
together, and the three nasal consonants [m], [n] and [ng] associated with them are placed just
under them, while at the same time being arranged side by side horizontally. This means that
vertically, all the bilabials, all the labio-dentals, etc are together with each other and
horizontally, the voiced and unvoiced are grouped.
This has proved to be a very powerful organization of the sounds of French. The great
majority of students seem to sense the logic of the chart, even if they remain quite incapable
of explaining it— as indeed they should. They seem to have the intuitive feeling that
somehow it is "right". They focus much less on remembering, or trying to remember the
chart, and much more on the actual gymnastics of the production of French. This is
particularly true for the less able students who might once have spent a lot of time and energy
memorizing the chart instead of actually doing the work required.
Needless to say, the teaching built around the revised chart respects the principle of the
Subordination of Teaching to Learning.
This text was published in the acts of the Conference "Caleb Gattegno's Science of Education: Ten Years After"
held in New York in November,1998 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Gattegno's death.