Move, Rove, Love: Color Cues Help Learning Novel English Words When Pronunciation Is Not Predictable From Spelling

Abstract

Seeing written forms of novel words during learning can help memorize vocabulary, but it may alter pronunciation, especially when orthography is opaque like in English. This study investigated whether a color‐code helps participants learn novel words with unpredictable pronunciation. Sixty Spanish speakers learned 16 English‐like pseudowords in one of three training conditions. Audio group learned training items with the auditory word form only. Two other groups learned items with auditory and written forms, with a color‐code (ColorCode group) or with random colors (RandColor group). Elicited speech samples from each group were assessed for recall and pronunciation accuracy. ColorCode group outperformed other groups on pronunciation in posttest tasks including reading training items in black text, and reading color‐coded untrained items. Color‐code benefits even strengthened one week later. These findings indicate that a color‐code can support pronunciation learning in languages with opaque orthography and should be more systematically implemented in learning resources.