Gail Portnuff Venable

Gail Portnuff Venable

Gail Venable had been working for 35 years as a speech-language pathologist and Orton-Gillingham trained reading tutor when she discovered that there was a more profound logic and order in the spelling system than she had realised. From then on, she embraced a new way of working with students: investigating the spelling of words to uncover the principles of English orthography: an approach that brought with it new understanding and joy. How could she best describe her work to other people? Eventually she realised that, just as she did with students, she could simply start with a word. Now Gail always has a great word in her back pocket to talk about.