FAQs - How Does Fast ForWord Work?

Reading starts with phonemic awareness
This is the ability to notice, think about and manipulate the individual sounds (or phonemes) in words.

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in our language that can make a difference in the meaning of a word (as in cat vs rat).

Phonemic awareness is an auditory skill. A child may have satisfactory hearing but still not be able to recognise phonemes in context.

Phonemic awareness and auditory processing are the main areas where children with language and reading difficulties may differ from other children.

A child is said to have an auditory processing problem when he or she has difficulty perceiving, decoding, remembering and retrieving information they hear. These auditory skills are necessary for children learning to read and spell.

How does Fast ForWord Teach Phonemic Awareness?
Before children can make the sound-letter associations necessary in reading, they must first be able to recognise the sounds and sound combinations that the letters represent.

All of the exercises in Fast ForWord help a child recognise these word sounds – first in isolation, and then in groups of sounds, in words, and finally, in sentences.

As students work on the Fast ForWord programs, they listen through headphones and respond with the mouse. With each click of the mouse, Fast ForWord software adapts to individual skill levels and responses, adjusting the learner's content exposure and targeting correct responses approximately 80% of the time, which maintains challenge and motivates success.

Fast ForWord programs apply proven learning principles...

• Develops Learning MAPs™: Memory, Attention, Processing and sequencing, the underlying cognitive processes required for reading and learning.
  
  
• Incorporate the Fast Power Learning™ Formula

Frequency and intensity, Adaptivity, Simultaneous development, and Timely motivation—proven learning techniques based on decades of neuroscience research.