Thomas C. Veatch, PhD

7804 NE 183rd St. Kenmore, WA 98028 USA
+1-206-858-2633 tcveatch@gmail.com tomveatch.com/read

To the Authority Having Jurisdiction:

Thank you for inviting this letter of proposal.

My innovation and project enables rapid and intuitive literacy acquisition by the youngest and oldest students, in school or out. Similar but old data says years of study are compressed into one via discipline in phonetic literacy teaching. We use a sound teaching method defined as building on existing knowledge. Human language speakers already know their mouth and sounds. We teach direct labelling of language sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet. On this foundation all linguistic knowledge is confident and clear, since without knowing the pronunciation of words, how can one know what is saying or thinking with confidence?

Therefore I am offering this: a relatively short intervention for interested elders and even the young but especially in English medium learning, which may accelerate away years of study, thus benefiting the individual and the society in all branches.

Allow me to briefly introduce myself and this project, describe my plans and ask for your support.

Regarding myself and the general project please see attached documents:

My focus is to make teacher-educators of IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The whole project's seed level is outreach to potential teacher-educators. Created, the seed is a teacher-educator, who can teach not only students and teachers but also future peers: more teacher-educators. This could achieve virality, solving world-wide illiteracy at scale.

Fortunately IPA has wide-ranging benefits:

  1. *There is some data showing a sound-based alphabet, taught first, can accelerate (English) students during first grade to fifth grade levels.
  2. **Write the forms of English (or any language) in IPA, so everyone can pronounce them, and sound like a native.
  3. ***Ask the Kumaoni or Garhwali student to give the class a word; write it in IPA which everyone can read; ask all to pronounce it. (Learning more languages earlier increases intelligence, so more of this is better.) This may erase stigma from an unwritten language, bring the respect of fellow students, persuade potential dropouts to stay and engage. It communicates respect.
  4. ****Often a spoken language merges sounds (e.g. Nepali merges Sanskrit's [s, ś, ṣ] all as [s]). Teach its speakers the historical phonetic differences using IPA (physical descriptions and explicit labels); practice until perfect; then they are no longer confused and blocked by unpredictable spelling and pronunciation.

After 100 years of IPA, a small miracle came to me, an innovation: to replace the Latin words with mechanical drawings. Then IPA emerge from specialty courses in linguistics. It becomes accessible to everyone. Any child can recognize a head in outline, teeth behind tongue. They are phonetic experts already! Actually any illiterate person, any speaker of any language, can understand what is a sound and what different letters look like. Who doesn't have two lips?

The innovation opens many new possibilities, for which the responsibility must be on the innovator: here I am.

Fortunately the widespread benefits open many doors; perhaps even to find, perhaps to create, seeds of Universal Literacy, teacher-educators of IPA.

For example, the support for English pronunciation alone makes IPA invaluable for English studies.

My ideal audience is teachers and future teachers.

They are studying in the DIETs of India. They are working in the government schools. I feel that these are my people.

Here is my plan and my request.

My plan, with your permission, is to visit and teach IPA at several DIETs in the Hindi belt. In Dehradun, I visited and taught IPA in 2025 and 2026 with support of former principal Rakesh Jugran. You are invited to discuss with him, his experience and feelings about this project.

My request: Please give me permission to visit one or more DIETs; possibilities are below:

How I work: As a private individual (retired) I have personal time and funds for travel and cheap hotels, and I want to spend my life seeking to eradicate illiteracy from the world. Neither do I seek nor offer funds. However to address organized groups I do request authorization, such as a simple letter of permission. Please ask the recipient also to report back what they observed. I can travel in the Hindi belt with reasonable confidence. I do not consider security to be at risk.

In conclusion, let's make the world a better place. I ask your blessing!

Sincerely yours,

Thomas Veatch