''ColorSounds'' was a national

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...

program televised on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

stations in the mid-1980s. ''ColorSounds'' taught viewers how to read and speak

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

creatively through the use of music videos. In this series, a music video, the same one that would appear on channels such as

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

and VH1 is presented, with the lyrics shown

karaoke Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music is ...

-style on the bottom of the screen, with words associated with the video's focus highlighted in various colors. For example, if a music video featured

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

s, every noun in the lyrics would be highlighted in red; accordingly, if another music video featured vowels sounds such as " a" all the a's would be highlighted in gray. ColorSounds presented an effective learning program through its multimodal approach to teaching and learning language. In addition, ''ColorSounds'' also noted and corrected spelling mistakes and poor grammar in the original lyrics. The show had no host, announcer or theme songs—the topics to be covered in that particular episode is displayed silently as a static caption at the start of the program or segment. ''Color Sounds'' was packaged in two formats—a 30-minute version for general PBS scheduling, and a 15-minute version for use during in-school telecasts.

References

PBS original programming 1980s American music television series 1984 American television series debuts 1985 American television series endings Reading and literacy television series {{US-music-tv-prog-stub