Our catch phrase is on its way.

Dear Fellow Earthlings,

Today I had to help one of my clients “dust off the cobwebs”. She had not practiced her Jingles for over a month. Her level is still approximately that of a native speaker of English, but her lack of adequate at-home practice was very clear to me.

For one thing, her s gesture was not deep enough or powerful enough. Back in early December of last year, her s　gesture was just fine… In order to get her s back on track, I had her work extensively with JINGLE C, which goes like this:

JINGLE C: SHE SELLS SINKS, VENDING MACHINES, AND SEASHELLS AT THE SEASHORE,　BUT SHE SEES THE SEA ANDGOES TO THE ZOO ONLY OCCSIONALLY.

A second sound that had deteriorated was her L (as in “Look” and “aLive”). Here, I noted that she was applying aninsufficient amount of tongue tip surface area to her alveolar ridge when shepronounced L. So we worked on JINGLE A to build her overall “primary synergy" back up and on JINGLE I to deal specifically with her L deficiency:

JINGLE A: FROM EARLY ON, THREE THOROUGHLY SURLY, THIRSTY THUGS THOUGHT THEY COULD TAKE BATHS THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT.

JINGLE I: MISS O’LEARY RARELY REALLY RAISES REALLY RED ROSES – THAT’S WHY SUE GIVES HER A BIT OF TROUBLE SHEN SHE SAYS SHE WANTS AN OPPORTUNITY TO TRAVEL.

I explained to the client that she needs to practice her JINGLES regularly if she wishes to maintain her level of English pronunciation expertise – and that she must strive to maintain and even improve her practice technique if she wishes to raise her English pronunciation to even higher levels of expertise.

Steve Walker, Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

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