Tara’s ESL VLOG: American Pronunciation – Part 2 – Using the Color Vowel Chart

Here is the second video in a series of videos that I want to share with you about pronunciation. Today we are going to take a look at just the VOWELS. By VOWELS I mean the 5 letters in the alphabet that create the SOUNDS of English – A, E, I, O, U (and sometimes y – but we will talk about that in a later video).

Now, the vowels are very important in English because they can change the meaning between words that look similar.

For instance:

PAN – PEN – PIN – PAWN (pronounced “pon”) – PUN

As you can see the vowels are very important in terms of understanding and BEING understood, and is something that many students struggle with. This is where the Color Vowel Chart comes in handy (= is useful). This unique tool allows us to identify the sounds of words through the application of COLORS and SYLLABLES. Eventually this leads to a mastering of Word Stress, Sentence Stress and Proper Tonality – all the ingredients for a native-like accent – which is what YOU dream of having!

The Color Vowel Chart is an amazing tool for the ESL classroom. Please follow this link to view the chart!

http://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/color-vowel-chart

Now that you have become more familiar with the chart, please watch the video again in order to get a better idea for the FORM your LIPS should have when making these SOUNDS. Then once you are ready, go ahead and give it a try!

Listen to the words I say in this Color Vowel Challenge  and try to identify the color for each 1-syllable word:

I hope you enjoyed today’s post! If you are interested in improving your pronunciation – or any other areas in English – then please email me today! Also, don’t forget to check out my Facebook page for tips and links to cool ESL websites! Take care, and talk to you soon!