All Brains Can Benefit from Fast ForWord

Fast ForWord benefits all students because it improves their learning capacity.  

Auditory Processing Disorder
Fast ForWord is effective for people with auditory processing disorder. It’s digitally “stretched” sounds give the brain more time to process speech sounds (phonemes). As the student’s auditory processing ability improves, Fast ForWord progressively speeds up the sounds to the pace of natural speech.

Fast ForWord’s technological ability to “acoustically modify” speech helps students recognise speech sounds, first as isolated sounds, then in syllables, then in words, and finally connected strings of words such as phrases and sentences. What do we mean by Auditory Processing?

Dyslexia / Struggling Readers
Students with Dyslexia and struggling readers, with and without auditory processing disorders, generally make gains in reading fluency after Fast ForWord participation. 

Brain imaging studies have shown that students with dyslexia have changed brain activation patterns, and significantly improved reading skills after working with the Fast ForWord exercises.

English as a Second Language
Because Fast ForWord trains the brain to recognise and discriminate the sounds of the English language, it is effective in helping English language learners. Use of Fast ForWord makes the student’s English lessons more effective as it teaches vocabulary and grammatical structures as well as improving phonological awareness and English language comprehension skills.

Attention Problems
While Fast ForWord is not a specific treatment for Attention Deficit Disorder, it increases auditory attention span as it develops sustained auditory and visual attention.

Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD)
Fast ForWord helps many children on the autistic spectrum. It improves their language skills and attention. Parents and carers often report recognisable gains in the childrens’ language functions.

Autistic children find the Fast ForWord programs very engaging because of the visual appeal of the exercises and the frequently repeated tasks. 

Watch a video on the impact of Fast ForWord for children with Autism.

Emotional/Behavioural Difficulties
Unexplained behaviour problems, at home or school, may be caused by unidentified learning difficulties. Parents and teachers often report that their child/student exhibits improved behaviour and better social skills after completing Fast ForWord programs.

Special Education
Fast ForWord improves language skills and the capacity to learn for students who are in Special Education classes.

See Dr Michael Merzenich, Sharon Begley and Dr John Gabrieli
speak on Brain Fitness for Children