Annette Gebhardt

 

Introduction

Life

Spelling Research

Conclusion

 

 

Introduction:

 

Although Dr. Richard Venezky became a pioneer in the Reading field, he attended college with the intention of becoming an electrical engineer. He was working on a project to build a machine that could recognize speech and became less enamored of the mechanics than with the linguistics involved. He then switched his focus to linguistics and the rest is orthographical history.

 

Life and Research:

 

Dr. Venezky grew up in Pittsburgh and attended Cornell University. He received a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering but switched his focus to linguistics and continued at Cornell to earn a Master’s in linguistics and then a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He authored the book The American Way of Spelling: The Structure and Origins of American English Orthography in 1970. His interest in orthography stemmed from a computing manual that he received. While reading it he found so many syntactical errors that he marked the errors and returned it to the sales office. This act led to a job as a technical writer in a programming office. He learned to program and then wrote the program that related spelling to sound. He did his doctoral dissertation on the subject of the history and analysis of English spelling.

 

After he finished his Ph.D., he went to the University of Wisconsin where he was involved in a major project. He developed the computer processing system for the Dictionary of American Regional English. He also worked on the Dictionary of Old English at the University of Toronto and consulted on other dictionaries, notably the Oxford English Dictionary. He joined the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Delaware in 1977.

 

During the last years of his life, Venezky concentrated on two areas of research: Literacy, specifically Adult Literacy, Orthography and Reading, and Educational Technology, exploring computer-assisted instruction and how the Internet can be integrated into education.

 

He studied GED students and their basic reading skill developments. This research had two goals: to study models of reading skill development and to develop a knowledge base to improve assessment and instruction in adult literacy. He received funding from the U.S. Department of Education through the National Center on Adult Literacy (NCAL) at the University of Pennsylvania. This study focused on adult students in White Plains, New York, Northern Delaware and Southern Pennsylvania.

 

He also updated his earlier 1970 work and called the new book, The American Way of Spelling. He had a long-term goal to “gain understanding of the development of decoding ability and of its different roles in the acquisition of rapid word recognition ability.”

 

Venezky was appointed the National Research Advisor for the U.S. Secretary of Education’s Initiative on Reading and Writing and held the position from 1995 - 1998. This was a part of a major effort for students from preschool through sixth grade as well as their parents, schools and communities. Some of the projects that Dr. Venezky engineered were a nation-wide tutoring program, a summer reading program, improved training for preschool workers, and developing benchmarks for teaching reading and writing.

 

He was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 1996 and was given the Distinguished Service Award by the Society for the Scientific Study of Education in 1999.

 

Spelling Research

 

Venezky’s technological expertise was put to the test when he began work on a machine that could identify sounds and their spellings. Venezky said in an interview that it was a pattern recognition problem. Letters of the English language alone may account for more than one sound. For example, “c” can make the sound “s” or “k.” Then when letters are combined, they can make even more sounds. In fact, there are over 50 sounds but only 26 letters. Also, English in America is often spelled and pronounced differently than it is in other English speaking countries. In America, this word is “color” but in England a “u” is added making the word “colour.” This inconsistency was just one of the difficulties Venezky encountered in his work.

 

Another difficulty is that what we see is not always what we know. The word “sane” is easily recognizable. However, when “sane” becomes “sanity” the vowel sound of the “a” is changed from a long sound to a short sound. This created problems in congruity which Venezky saw as no problem for an average reader, but was a distinct disadvantage for someone learning English as a second language.

 

Venezky embraced the challenge of mapping spelling into sound. He felt that in order to do this words needed to be broken down into their smallest graphemic units. For words like “cat” and “dog,” this was not difficult. A word like “bomb” proved more challenging. Venezky differed with dictionary explanations that the “b” in this word is silent. If a suffix were to be added to the word “debt,” as in “debtor,” the word remains silent. However, when “bomb” becomes “bombardier,” the second “b” is clearly heard.

 

He broke graphemes into two units. The first was Major Relational Units. This was then broken into Consonants and Vowels, then further into simple and compound for consonants and primary and secondary for vowels. The simple consonants were the consonants alone and also u,gh, sh and th. The compound consonants were ck, dg, tch, wh and x. The primary vowels are the five well known vowels, a,e,i,o,u and also y. The second vowels are the additional sounds that vowels can make. The second unit was Minor Relational Units. Simple consonants were kh and sch and the compound consonant was gn. The vowels were just secondary and those were ae, eau, eo and uy (Venezky 1970.)

 

Venezky concluded that the varied spellings were due more to the nature of English as a borrowed language than any other cause. He does not consider them irregular because that which would seem irregular is what distinguishes them as borrowed from foreign languages. He considers this an “essential feature” of English orthography (Venezky1970.)

 

While Dr. Venezky believed that spelling reform could be achieved, he did not believe it was because orthography should be purely phonemic or morphemic. Those that believe so believe that language should be more uniform which would make it easier. Dr. Venezky believed that would cause greater problems in the patterns which currently present problems. A proposal of one letter for one sound could help but would totally change the present system. More letters would need to be created. He felt that the same result could be achieved “through an extension of the current phonemic patterns like the final e pattern and consonant germination, coupled with a few new letters” (Venezky 1970.) The change would be less drastic and it would preserve a larger number of the current morphemic patterns.

 

 

Conclusion:

 

After battling cancer, Dr. Venezky died on June 11, 2004. He is survived by his wife and two children. His legacy will continue with the creation of the Richard Venezky award for creative work in the area of literacy.

 

Venezky, R.L. (1970). ''The Structure of English Orthography''. The Netherlands: Mouton & Co.

 

http://www.udel.edu/ETL/people/venezky/biography.html

 

http://blueslugs.com/rlv/index.php/archives/2004/06/02/richard-venezky-award/

 

http://sul-ic-rdm.stanford.edu:8080/cubberley/blog/archives/56

 

http://www.literacyonline.org/sltp/presntr/venezky.htm

 

http://www.literacyonline.org/sltp/session/s1.htm

 

https://www.stanford.edu/group/cubberley/collections/venezky

 

http://www.thattechnicalbookstore.com/b0805850899.htm

 

http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/venezky.htm

 

http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2004/venezky061404.html

 

http://www.aap.org/family/readmeastory.htm

 

 

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Comments by Cynthia Boles

Annette, please email when you are finished. Thanks!

 

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Commentary by Sara Sewell

E-mail me too!

 

Commentary by Kim Freeman

Ditto

 

Commentary by Deborah Louie

I guess me too Annette!! Thank you!!

 

Commentary by Philicia Randolph

Email me at pcr3@students.uwf.edu when you are done.

 

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Commentary by Deborah Louie

 

I really enjoyed your topic very much. One editing comment: in the first paragraph of the section Life and Research, there should be a period after the sentence "from a computing manual he received". I especially enjoyed the links that you provided: in particular his home page. Great info there!! Excellent job, Annette.