東京銀座・オンライン。1日5分でネイティブ発音に！
外資・MBA・LLM・通訳・エグゼクティブの英語発音矯正スクール

When my colleagues and I are teaching our Jingles clients, it is very natural
for us to use the phrase:

“Let’s do this so that we can get closer to the native speakers.”

Of course, every client wants to get closer to natives –- or so I thought!!

But to my surprise, not every client feels this way! One day, a 14 year old
client responded to the above statement in this way:

“Yeah, but maybe I don’t want to sound native anyway. After all, I’m Japanese.”

I never expected to meet a Jingles client who does not want to sound native.

I was shocked to hear him say that. But I (as an instructor) realized I needed to
think of a way to motivate him, since he’s actually extremely lucky to have the
chance to receive Jingles training — even if it has been forced on him by his parents.

So, I asked Mr. Walker for advice on what I could do to encourage my student
to be more eager in achieving good English pronunciation.

Mr. Walker’s answer was quite simple:

“Just tell him, ‘OK, if you don’t want to sound native, let’s aim for a score of 88,
so you will be good enough to be understood when you go abroad.’”

But my fear was that the student might be unwilling even to aim for “88”.
I am quite capable of helping people eager to make themselves understood in
English. But, I can’t force people to do what they do not want to do…

I felt depressed, and told Mr. Walker that I didn’t think it would be so easy to
change the student’s attitude. But Mr. Walker’s answer was again very simple.
He said that, in a case like this, the young student only need be informed that
his bright future will become even brighter of he gains the ability to be understood
in English. Mr. Walker compared achieving good pronunciation to having a new
uniform to wear whenever one needs it.

Doesn’t that sound nice! A new uniform! The student could have has the freedom
to decide to wear it or not. All at once, the fog in my mind was cleared.
I was quite sure that the boy — and maybe all other students who lack motivation
— would think; “Why not have a new uniform! Maybe I might want to wear it
someday in my bright future!”