Fast ForWord Language

Scientific Learning Fast ForWord Language is an adaptive computer program that is internet based.  Drawing on 25 years of research on the brain plasticity and the neurological basis of language, scientists developed the Fast ForWord language product in an attempt to provide training in oral language comprehension and other skills critical for success in reading.  The Fast ForWord Language product is designed as an immediate, intensive intervention for students in grades K – 12, who experience difficulties with oral language skills or students with a learning disability.

The developers of Fast ForWord Language product propose that language impairments may be caused by a slow rate of processing for the rapidly successive acoustic cues in speech.  They hypothesize that students who have difficulty distinguishing phonemes at normal speeds of fluent speech may be successful when the speech is acoustically modified and slowed down.  Moreover, through intensive, frequent exercises with gradual and progressive changes in difficulty, they maintain that the brain can be “re-wired” to process speech at normal speeds.  Based on the theory of brain plasticity, or the concept that the brain can change as people learn new skills, the Fast ForWord Language exercises were conceived to retrain the brain in making connections between speech and meaning.  As a student moves through an exercise, the level of difficulty gradually increases and the modified speech sounds gradually change toward natural speech sounds that the student processes at the individual phoneme level, in groups of phonemes, at the word level, and then the sentence level.  The adaptive software immediately increases or decreases the difficulty based on the student’s progress, thus creating a program that is challenging and rewarding at the same time.

There is a beginning level of research evidence to support the use of Fast ForWord Language as an intervention for children experiencing difficulties to read.  The effects of training with Fast ForWord Language are most consistently found in the areas of language comprehension and phonemic awareness.

Strengths of Fast ForWord Language:

• Intensive skill work is embedded in game-like training exercises that are engaging and motivating.

• Difficulty levels progress and adapt gradually such that the student gives correct answers approximately 80% of the time.

• Corrective feedback is always given before the next task is begun.  When the responses are correct, the student is rewarded by sounds, lights, progress indicators, animations, and points.

• Improvements have been noted in oral language shills (phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and comprehension) in traditionally underperforming subgroups of poor readers.

Weaknesses of Fast ForWord Language:

• The activities in Fast ForWord Language do not directly teach print reading skills.  They are based on the idea that improvements in basic language processing skills will generalize to   improvements in reading accuracy and comprehension.  Until this assumption is verified in research, this remains a potential weakness.

Source: Florida Center for Reading Research