Colouring Clearer English, Rooted in Sound

English sound and spelling rarely match, making pronunciation challenging for learners and difficult to teach systematically. As a result, pronunciation is often sidelined in EAL classrooms, even though clear, confident speech plays a vital role in academic success, workplace advancement, and community participation.This session focuses on supporting clearer, more confident speech while honouring learners’ existing accents and linguistic identities. As longtime EAL instructors who now support teachers in their professional practice, we understand the frustration of trying multiple strategies while seeing limited improvement in learners’ speaking clarity. Our search for a more coherent framework led us to Judy Thompson’s Colour Vowel chart — a visual system developed in Canadian ESL classrooms by Thompson, a TEDx speaker, English and literacy facilitator, and author. Having met Judy and learned more about her tireless work supporting newcomers, we were deeply inspired by both the clarity of her framework and her commitment to helping learners succeed. This interactive workshop introduces a practical, classroom-tested approach that brings together vowel sound awareness and word stress. Rather than focusing on isolated sounds or complex phonetic symbols, the Colour Vowel system helps learners identify the stressed syllable and categorize its vowel sound, creating meaningful connections between spelling, sound, and rhythm. Participants will explore four simple questions that bring consistency to pronunciation work: How many syllables does the word have? Which syllable carries the stress? Is the vowel r-influenced? Is the sound long or short? Together, these questions create a repeatable structure that supports clearer, more confident speech. The session will also introduce a clear, visually organized reference tool that helps learners recognize patterns across many words and supports teachers in making pronunciation instruction more concrete and accessible. Through demonstration and guided practice, attendees will experience how this framework can be applied across levels, themes, learner populations, and existing classroom resources. Participants will leave with adaptable strategies for improving speech clarity and building learner confidence in any EAL classroom.