The products feature interactive, animated exercises and use patented technologies that slow down and digitally enhance speech sounds, and adapt to each student's skill level. Results are generated with every key stroke. Students work on Fast ForWord® for 50 minutes a day, five days a week for a minimum of twelve weeks (30 minute schedules are also available). Each day the student is prompted to answer hundreds of increasingly more difficult exercises in quick succession, using scientifically-based neuroscience principles. Results are seen in reading and learning because Fast ForWord® strengthens both cognitive (thinking) skills and fundamental reading & language skills. 

 

▪ Phonemic awareness           ▪ Sound-letter association      

▪ Decoding                              ▪ Vocabulary                          

▪ Spelling                                 ▪ Syntax & Grammar

▪ Comprehension                    ▪ Auditory Processing                       

▪ Reading fluency

Fast ForWord® Programs

Fast ForWord® consists of two groups of programs:

1. Language (for primary school students) & Literacy (for secondary school students): develops fundamental language and cognitive skills which are essential for reading and learning.

2. Reading: provides a sequenced learning environment that advances the key cognitive (thinking) skills required to become fluent readers.

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Auditory Processing Disorder and Fast ForWord®

Auditory processing refers to ‘what the brain does with what it hears’. It is different to ‘hearing’, in that a person can have normal hearing but have difficulties with auditory processing. Fast ForWord® uses patented technologies that slow down and digitally enhance speech sounds. It is through the digitally ‘stretched’ sounds that the brain is given more time to process speech sounds (phonemes). This helps the student to recognise speech sounds first as isolated sounds, then in syllables, then in words, and finally in phrases and sentences. As the student’s auditory processing ability improves, Fast ForWord® progressively speeds up the sounds to the pace of natural speech. It is through these processes that Fast ForWord® has been such a success for children with an auditory processing disorder.

Since 1999, Fast ForWord® has been successfully used around the world with hundreds of children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Fast ForWord® is only one tool for helping children with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome to reach their potential, however research and clinical use have shown it to be an extremely effective method for opening the child’s window to language. See Dr. Michael Merzenich talk about Fast ForWord® and Autism (click here)

A recent study* published in Science Daily (January 10, 2010) details how the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia used brain imaging to detect slight processing delays as a way of diagnosing autism. “Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) process sound and language a fraction of a second slower than children without ASDs, and measuring magnetic signals that mark this delay may become a standardized way to diagnose autism”. This may explain why using the Fast ForWord software as an intervention for ASD has had so much success in recent years. Fast ForWord directly targets processing speed -- a trait so common in autistic children. Improved processing speeds greatly helps their receptive and expressive language skills resulting in social and communication skills gains.

*Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (2010, January 10). Brain imaging may help diagnose autism. ScienceDaily. Details at www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100108101421.htm

Dyslexia and Fast ForWord®

New research shows that children with dyslexia, compared to typical readers, have trouble processing fast-changing sounds. Scientists believe this prevents them from properly learning syllables when they first hear language, which later causes reading difficulties.

Through the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) - a type of specialized MRI scan - studies are now able to show that the brains of the children with dyslexia can change after completing exercises in the Fast ForWord® Language program. The repetitive exercises appear to rewire the dyslexic children's brains: after eight weeks of daily sessions—about 60 hours total—their brains responded more like typical readers' when processing fast-changing sounds and their reading improved. 

To read the full article and view the video click here

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Fast ForWord® is based on neuroscience research which tells us:

- the brain can be trained to re-structure (re-wire)

- “brain plasticity” is the ability of the brain to change through experience & learning

- for the brain to make these changes (‘re-wire’), certain conditions or “learning principles”
must be met.

- these learning principles have been identified as repetition, adaptivity to a person’s skill level,
motivation, and immediate feedback.

- research has also shown that it is possible to improve one’s working memory capacity through systematic, intensive training. In other words, working memory capacity is not fixed, but rather plastic. See Cogmed Working Memory Training.

For more information or to make a booking for a free information and demonstration session, call Anna on 0409 850082 or complete the Online Consultation form.