Our catch phrase is on its way.
Dear Fellow Earthlings,
Mr. M, a Jingles client in his mid-40s, is a hardworking high school English teacher in Japan. His grammar and usage are impeccable – and he has the kind of personality that endears him to his students: hardworking, cheerful, energetic, and warm. Besides teaching English, Mr. M is also the soccer coach at his school – and is in excellent physical condition.
The reason why Mr. M started taking Jingles sessions is that despite all of his talents and motivation, the quality of his pronunciation of English was not up to par with that of many of his colleagues or even his students – and certainly was well below that of native speakers of English.
Since Mr. M started taking Jingles sessions back on September 20, 2012, he has raised his level from 84.9 to his curent level of 88.5. His “L” sounds (for in English, there are at least 6 different “L” allophones.) continue to lag in their rate of development when compared with his other English gestures.
But just as the “L” sounds of native speakers of English all coalesce into nativelike gestures when native speakers are between 3 and 5 years of age (in most cases), Mr. M’s “L”s are now showing very favorable signs of doing just that.
He is now ready to take his well developed “th” gestures (the voiceless th as in “three” and the voiced “th” as in “this”) and apply their task dynamics to use our Jingles “here-to-there” technique (See Installment 205.) to go from, say, “thatch” to “that” to “tatter” to “dabble” to “chatter” to “jab” to “nab” to “lab”, following the chain of relationships that exist among the tongue tip gestures (“th”,“th”, t, D, ch, j, N, L) of English.
Thus Mr. M’s “wrong” pronunciation of “long” will soon be a thing of the past – and he will have accomplished his goal of nativelike English speech motor skills competency in a shade under two years – which is a period much shorter than that required for children whose native language is English to accomplish!
Steve Walker, Earthsaver and Jingles Creator
© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.