True Jinglers Keep Trying, No Matter What!

Dear Fellow Earthlings,

Today I taught 4 clients. All of them are highly motivated, very talented, hard working people. The first 3 were all on approximately the same place in their worksheets. The 4th was "Mr. Q" Do you remember him? I discussed his efforts to develop nativelike English pronunciation only last week, in installments 319 and 320.

The first to "Jingle" with me was Ms. IW. This Tokyo University graduate student can learn instantly. All she has to do from now on is to develop the necessary motor skills that she knows she needs. She is making extremely fast progress. Each time I train Ms. IW I see how not only the individual phonemes she produces but also the ways in which she links them together are developing both systematically and systemically.

Next up was Ms. SY, who is developing her England English allophonome. I was most impressed by the quality of her "engma" (the consonant found at the end of the word "song"). How it is that she

can produce that sound so well mystifies me. I can tell everyone from experience that even some

native speakers of English are unable to say "engma" correctly, pronouncing, for example, the word

"going" as "gou weeNu".

My third client was Mr. JM. This gentleman is able to do American English, England English, and Australian English equally well. Yet, he still needs lots of training in developing his s/z gestures and both his voiceless and voiced "th" gestures. After that happens, then he will be able to develop his "L" gestures.

The key is for him to improve his at-home TRAINING MODE/regular mode switching techniques. The reason why Mr. JM is so good at switching from American to England to Australian English is that he has a firm handle on the vowels of all three. What he needs now is to develop his consonants, for English has a consonant-based phonome. This is in contrast to Japanese, (whose phonome is vowel-based) and to Chinese (whose phonome is consonant/vowel/tone based). My final client for the day was Mr. Q. My how Mr. Q's ability to use English speech motor skills techniques has improved during the past few days! He did his homework as prescribed. This has resulted in his gaining a firmer grasp of the task dynamics needed to make the sounds come out as he wants them to! It is significant to mention that Mr. Q is learning that using his dimples when he pronounces E, Ey, M, p, and b This is making it easier for Mr. Q to make himself understood by the many native speakers of English he speaks to on a daily basis. Since his e.ey.I.iy distinctions are showing such improvement, we can now turn our attention to the difficulty he has producing the following word pairs so that native speakers of English can understand him: veal/view: As I enjoyed the veal, I also enjoyed the view. wild/wired : He went wild when I wired the money to his cousin. tired/tiled: The worker got tired as he tiled that bathroom floor. How wonderful it is to follow the progress of my clients as they develop nativelike competency in their pronunciations! Steve Walker Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

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