The Color Category

By Lynn King

Teaching English vocabulary usually includes the naming of basic colors. The color category is useful, important, and necessary for all ages and levels to learn because, in addition to being interesting, it can lead to expanded English in social interaction as well as in many academic content areas. Color adjectives are also among the first to show form and placement of adjectives with nouns.

For beginners, the color category of adjectives is visual and is easily transferred from students’ native languages. And, the mostly one-syllable words are generally easy to pronounce, spell, read, and write. This category adds specificity to beginning level language acquisition and helps students gain more self-confidence in their ability to communicate better in a new language about their personal preferences, experiences, and knowledge.

The following are often ways that students talk about, share, and write about favorites and preferences in their own lives here in the United States and those in their native cultures:

Colors for clothing, including fabrics (wool, cotton, silk, etc., and patterns such as striped, plaid, polka dot, floral, as well as solid colors)
Colors for cars, rooms in the house, exterior color of a house
Colors of fruit and vegetables and perhaps special food, too
Colors in students’ national flags and their symbolic meanings
Colors used in special holidays and celebrations and their history or symbolism
Colors representing death and mourning
Colors of the four seasons and their changes
Colors of moods, feelings, and emotions through idioms or cliches
Colors describing superstitions
Colors describing facial features and expressions

As students progress, they will learn more detailed, nuanced, and descriptive adjectives related to color. Added are the “in-between” shades—including the -ish suffix and compound forms (gold, silver, beige, burgundy, baby blue, greenish, reddish, multicolored). Grammar points are added using color adjectives in comparative and superlative forms: as black as; blacker than; the blackest. Color idiom lessons are fun and interesting, especially for their cultural value (white as a sheet; red as a beet). Writing about a personal experience using color idioms is always an interesting task for students. Check websites for “color idioms in English” for many lists and ideas.

As a practical matter for many older teens and adults, getting a job and a driver’s license are both very necessary. It is therefore important to teach students the colors and meanings of work safety signs, street signs, street markings, and traffic lights.

Academic content areas are particularly rich in topics to explore with color and may include:

Science: studying the light spectrum and prisms; photosynthesis; the water cycle; weather and climate; animals; animal and human adaptation to seasonal changes; gardens and flowers and other plant life
Math: color-coded shapes, e.g., a red circle or blue triangle
Art: describing selected famous paintings and the feelings they evoke in both oral and written form; learning names of different media (watercolor, oil, acrylic, gouache, pastel) and types (landscape, still life, portraits, abstract); learning about mixing colors to get a different color, such as red + white = pink; showing art indicative of students’ cultures; reading “color” poems and writing one’s own; illustrating a “color” poem
Literature: All ages can benefit from learning a few Mother Goose nursery rhymes that mention a specific color, if only for repetition for pronunciation and fluency. Students could read an American folktale such as “Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.” And the folktale “The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs” is great for discussion of the moral of the story. There are, of course, so many options for reading, discussing, and writing with the idea of color in mind that it’s always up to the instructor to select the most appropriate material.

When any instructor introduces color into any area of study, it is important to remember that retention of language is always aided by repetition in multiple ways and modes of learning. So don’t forget to add music and singing, take a field trip to the grocery store to concentrate on the fruit and vegetable departments, have a native dress fashion show, make an in-house visit to the art department, enjoy class potluck events, play games of “I Spy Something (color)” or “Find Someone Who,” do pair interviews and report back to the class, try the “Line Up” conversation activity (sometimes called Inside/Outside Circles), talk about colors of national, local, and school sports teams, or anything else you can think of that is related in some way to color. The idea is to continue to recycle categories in as many ways as possible.
The names of colors are some of the earliest words that students encounter when learning a language, and they continue to be a source of interest and fun while at the same time providing a way to teach form, function, academic content, and American culture.

Lynn King taught ESL in secondary and adult education for thirty years, is retired, and lives in Springfield, Illinois.


The Color Category By Lynn King Teaching English vocabulary usually includes the naming of basic colors. The color category is useful, important, and necessary for all ages and levels to learn because, in addition to being interesting, it can lead to expanded English in social interaction as well as in many academic content areas. Color adjectives are also among the first to show form and placement of adjectives with nouns. For beginners, the color category of adjectives is visual and is easily transferred from students’ native languages. And, the mostly one-syllable words are generally easy to pronounce, spell, read, and write. This category adds specificity to beginning level language acquisition and helps students gain more self-confidence in their ability to communicate better in a new language about their personal preferences, experiences, and knowledge. The following are often ways that students talk about, share, and write about favorites and preferences in their own lives here in the United States and those in their native cultures: Colors for clothing, including fabrics (wool, cotton, silk, etc., and patterns such as striped, plaid, polka dot, floral, as well as solid colors) Colors for cars, rooms in the house, exterior color of a house Colors of fruit and vegetables and perhaps special food, too Colors in students’ national flags and their symbolic meanings Colors used in special holidays and celebrations and their history or symbolism Colors representing death and mourning Colors of the four seasons and their changes Colors of moods, feelings, and emotions through idioms or cliches Colors describing superstitions Colors describing facial features and expressions As students progress, they will learn more detailed, nuanced, and descriptive adjectives related to color. Added are the “in-between” shades—including the -ish suffix and compound forms (gold, silver, beige, burgundy, baby blue, greenish, reddish, multicolored). Grammar points are added using color adjectives in comparative and superlative forms: as black as; blacker than; the blackest. Color idiom lessons are fun and interesting, especially for their cultural value (white as a sheet; red as a beet). Writing about a personal experience using color idioms is always an interesting task for students. Check websites for “color idioms in English” for many lists and ideas. As a practical matter for many older teens and adults, getting a job and a driver’s license are both very necessary. It is therefore important to teach students the colors and meanings of work safety signs, street signs, street markings, and traffic lights. Academic content areas are particularly rich in topics to explore with color and may include: Science: studying the light spectrum and prisms; photosynthesis; the water cycle; weather and climate; animals; animal and human adaptation to seasonal changes; gardens and flowers and other plant life Math: color-coded shapes, e.g., a red circle or blue triangle Art: describing selected famous paintings and the feelings they evoke in both oral and written form; learning names of different media (watercolor, oil, acrylic, gouache, pastel) and types (landscape, still life, portraits, abstract); learning about mixing colors to get a different color, such as red + white = pink; showing art indicative of students’ cultures; reading “color” poems and writing one’s own; illustrating a “color” poem Literature: All ages can benefit from learning a few Mother Goose nursery rhymes that mention a specific color, if only for repetition for pronunciation and fluency. Students could read an American folktale such as “Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.” And the folktale “The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs” is great for discussion of the moral of the story. There are, of course, so many options for reading, discussing, and writing with the idea of color in mind that it’s always up to the instructor to select the most appropriate material. When any instructor introduces color into any area of study, it is important to remember that retention of language is always aided by repetition in multiple ways and modes of learning. So don’t forget to add music and singing, take a field trip to the grocery store to concentrate on the fruit and vegetable departments, have a native dress fashion show, make an in-house visit to the art department, enjoy class potluck events, play games of “I Spy Something (color)” or “Find Someone Who,” do pair interviews and report back to the class, try the “Line Up” conversation activity (sometimes called Inside/Outside Circles), talk about colors of national, local, and school sports teams, or anything else you can think of that is related in some way to color. The idea is to continue to recycle categories in as many ways as possible. The names of colors are some of the earliest words that students encounter when learning a language, and they continue to be a source of interest and fun while at the same time providing a way to teach form, function, academic content, and American culture. Lynn King taught ESL in secondary and adult education for thirty years, is retired, and lives in Springfield, Illinois.
Spring 2024 (2) - Spring 2024