Joseph Neef (1770-1854): a forgotten pioneer of applying phonetics and regularised phonic materials to the initial teaching of literacy in English

Abstract

ABSTRACT Joseph Neef (1770–1854) was one of Pestalozzi’s earliest collaborators in Switzerland (1800). He took his mentor’s ideas and principles first to Paris (1803), and then to Pennsylvania (1806). In 1808 he published the first book on educational method written in English in the United States, and in 1809 opened the first Pestalozzian school in the Americas. He was the first to devise a linguistic phonics approach to the initial teaching of literacy in English based on regular sound-symbol patterns, and published a book setting out his system in 1813. This was based on three main principles: start from the phonemes of spoken English; introduce them and the graphemes used to write them very gradually and practise them intensively; and use, initially, only simple, regularised syllables, words and sentences. His principal innovation was to adapt a phonetic notation for vowel phonemes from a 1791 British book on elocution, and add it to the Pestalozzian approach. He had little impact on the teaching of literacy, but deserves to be recognised as a radical innovator.