Our catch phrase is on its way.

Installment 210

Dear Fellow Earthlings,

The Jingles have been carefully designed so that each Jingle client’s goals regarding English pronunciation can be met in the shortest time possible. Client progress is always carefully monitored. When progress is unsatisfactory, my Jingles instructors and I investigate

whether the situation has been created by errors in the way the client is practicing, lack of proper teaching technique by the client’s instructor (or instructors), limitations of current Jingles teaching techniques, gaps in Jingles theory, or some combination(s) of any of these.

An interesting example of how our method in dealing with unsatisfactory progress came up just yesterday. A certain client (whom we shall call “Mel”) is now working with Worksheet 63-1, which features in-depth, near native level JINGLE A and JINGLE B drilling. For the life of him, Mel just cannot get himself to spontaneously say the word “early” correctly in JINGLE A. It usually comes out as “air-ly”. In JINGLE A there are two other words that call for the uR sound used in “early” (“surly” and “thirsty”). For these two words, as well as for all 8 words containing uR in JINGLE B, Mel does just fine.

A deeper analysis of Mel’s level of competency reveals something very telling: Whereas his score for JINGLE A is much higher than average considering his current stage of Jingles training, his score for JINGLE B is much lower. This is something that happens very rarely. The solution is that – at least for the next three to four months – Mel should consider JINGLE B and NOT JINGLE A to be his most important Jingle. Let it be said here that, when all is said and done, JINGLE A is the most important of the Jingles – until the client reaches the native level of English pronunciation competency, at which point all Jingles achieve parity with each other.

Getting back to Mel: By bringing his JINGLE B production up to the level of his JINGLE A production, Mel will cause the “e-a-r” portion of his pronunciation of the word “early” to, at some happy moment, automatically drop into place, making its pronunciation change from “eR” to “uR”!

Will this “weark”? Excuse me… Will this “work”? Definitely!

Steve Walker, Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

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