Our catch phrase is on its way.

Dear Fellow Earthlings

My “Jingles” (See installments 25 and 28, among others.) have been used now for one-and-a-half years by Seibudainiiza, a junior high school in Saitama Prefecture near Tokyo, Japan. This is the first time “The Jingles” have been used in a regular school, one whose students are 12 and 13 years of age. I have been sending Jingles instructors from my school in Yokohama, Japan to Seibudainiiza once or twice a week during these one-and-a-half years to teach two groups of junior high school students for 45 minutes each. The results have been wonderful! Even the regular English teaching staff members at the school are amazed at how these students, who did not start learning the Roman alphabet (used by native speakers of English) until they were 12, can pronounce not only those words contained in “The Jingles” but also speeches as sophisticated as one that deals with “age segregation in classrooms as a barrier to education”. I feel that the French are losing their primary school students to English by introducing them too early. True, those students DO sound great by the time they reach junior high school – but it comes with a cost: Precious hours growing up “in French” are lost. All the French would need to do in order to fortify their own beleaguered language is to try Jingles training with their students starting from the age of 12. Seibudai is now producing some very fine speakers of English – but without in any way opening the pandora’s box of erosion of the students’ precious native language! My hat is off to the innovative administration and teaching people at Seibudai. Let’s make your students completely bilingual!

Steve Walker, Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.