Love Can Save the "Word" --> the World.

Dear Fellow Earthlings,

Ms. "A" is one of my advanced Jingles clients. Despite her beautiful pronunciation, she continues to

find it very difficult to pronounce her non-tongue tip "L" sound (as in the words "table", "pill" and "world") in a nativelike manner.

For example when she says "Love is the most important thing in the world.", it sounds like she is saying "Love is the most important thing in the word."

We have been dealing with this deficiency now for close to two months. I have tried numerous techniques in hopes of developing her ability to pronounce the words "word" and "world" distinctively, but to no avail.

She IS making progress -- but her progress is so slow...

Since all of the gestures of English (and indeed of all languages) cannot be produced in a fully nativelike manner unless the learner of the target language has a nativelike command of the "primary synergy center' of that language within kerm body, I am currently trying to discover what aspects of Ms. "A"'s primary synergy (S1) are deficient. Unless that deficiency is eliminated, her secondary (trunk of the body), tertiary (oral, throat, and nasal cavities), and quaternary (dialect fine tuning) synergies (S2, S3, S4, respectively) will either not be amenable to sufficient development, or will be disconnected from her overall target language allophonome (that is, her English language phonological system).

In analyzing Ms. "A"'s production, I notice that her s and z gestures are conspicuously weak when compared with the s and z produced by native speakers of England-based (U.S./Canadian/Australian/New Zealand/Falkland Islands/ /England) English. This weakness results in an inability to pronounce not only s and z -- but also all of her other consonants as well as many of her vowels.

Therefore, I have assigned Ms. "A" to practice JINGLE C (which focuses on the s and z gestures in "The TRAINING MODE" only) for 3 minutes, 3 or 4 times per week. The inexperienced Jingles instructor (and certainly all native speakers of England-based English) would find that her TRAINING MODE (TM) renditions of her Jingles "sound wonderful". However, they are failing to realize that Ms. "A:'s supposedly "wonderful" renditions are uttered not in the "regular mode" (which is the ultimate goal of Jingles training), but rather in the "TRAINING MODE" -- which is but a device for the development of a proper, nativelike command of "regular mode" production.

In Ms. "A"'s case, I am hopeful that by improving her ability to produce the TM with more power and vitality, she will be able to develop her primary synergy (S1) to the point that it can support her other 3 synergies to the same extent that S1 does for native speakers of England-based English.

I have asked Ms. "A" to be sure and employ the phonetic symbols used in Jingles training so that she can gain greater expertise in manipulating the gestures described by those sounds. If she can do this, then true, nativelike English pronunciation expertise will place her English phonological competency on par with that of native speakers of English "the worLd over"!

(Installment 2 of this blog will be released tomorrow.)

Steve Walker

Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

EarthSaver

Steve Walker

Love Can Save the "Word" --> the World.