Zev Handel Honors 211 26 January 2011 Writing Assignment #1 The concept of reading by word shape recognition is not

new by any means. DuPonceau wrote in 1838, we do not read by letters; we read by groups of those little signs, representing words and sentences (DuPonceau, 10). This statement suggests that it is not letters that are of great importance in the grand scheme of reading. Rather, reading comprehensions is afforded by the compound structure that these subunits. Is he correct? If so, why does English written language make use of letters? How is this related to reading graphemes of languages that do not use alphabetic writing? A study about this subject was conducted about thirty years ago. According to Drewnowsky and Healy (1978) and Healy (1980), readers process words on multiple levels at the same time. Such levels include whole-word unit recognition, letter-by-letter analysis, and a break down based on pronunciation. If readers initially recognize a word based on shape and context, the human brain will deem that it is no longer necessary to continue to process that word. Letter-by-letter breakdown is only required if the envelope, or shape, of a word is unrecognizable. My guess as to why people fail to recognize a word could be because the reader has never seen the word or because the word does not appear to fit the context of the writing at first glance. There appears to be many different factors that influence the process of word identification (evidence for the following statements are based on personal perception and class discussions). Recurring exposure to the physical shape of a written word seems to help readers identify the word fairly quickly, but I would imagine that the slightest change made to the

written words shape would render it much harder to recognize. The written word acquisition, for example, has a specific shape that is easily recognizable by many native English readers. If I attempt to the same word in a foreign font (or in unfamiliar handwriting), acquisition, my reading time slows as my brain takes longer to recognize the pudgy letters with abnormal spacing. ACQUISITION probably takes a bit longer to read because the capital type causes the word to lose its more commonly viewed lower case envelope, which is what English readers are used to seeing. The one exception to this concept that I have found so far pertains to the word dictionary. According to this study, the word is fairly recognizable even if the actual letters are obscured, especially if there is context around the word. DICTIONARY, despite the fact that is it written in capital letters, is still immediately recognizable (based on the scholarly study I just conducted on myself and my two roommates). I theorize that this happens because the word DICTIONARY, in capital letters, is a familiar sight to literate English speakers. Of all of the bookcases they have looked at in their life spans, I suspect the word DICTIONARY was a common sighting. Based on this analysis, I am inclined to disagree with DuPonceau. The human brain does seem to read words by their envelopes to some degree, but letters as individual units are important for at least a few reasons, such as the learning to pronounce an unfamiliar written word, the reading of writing in uppercase type, and the reading of written words in exotic fonts or handwriting.