Fast ForWord Literacy consists of five exercises:
The student helps the soccer player kick goals on the outer-space soccer pitch. This exercise improves identification and discrimination of syllables that differ by an individual phoneme, increasing a student’s phonological fluency and listening accuracy.
Students persuade the space musician to drop from the ceiling of the auditorium and play for the audience by matching spoken words in increasingly complex grids of speakers. This exercise improves the student’s ability to recognise spoken words by using auditory and visual-spatial working memory to locate matching syllables.
The rider on the space cycle moves faster and faster as the student correctly identifies the correct sequence of multiple sound sweeps. This exercise improves the speed at which the student identifies and understands rapid, successive changes in sound (listening accuracy), and improves the student’s ability to hold sounds in memory.
As the space DJ spins the discs on the turntable, students attempt to identify identical sounds. This phonological fluency exercise increases in difficulty across three dimensions: synthetic speech emphasis, presentation rate, phoneme discrimination.
Students follow spoken directions and also listen to descriptions of activities and events displayed in pictures on their screens. They then select the picture that correctly illustrates the description. This exercise improves skills in listening comprehension, English language conventions, and following directions through a combination of increasingly complex activities.
Language and reading skills developed by Fast ForWord Literacy:
- Listening accuracy required to decode effortlessly
- Auditory sequencing
- Listening comprehension
- Phonological memory, accuracy and fluency
- Vocabulary and English language conventions.
Cognitive skills developed by Fast ForWord Literacy Advanced:
- Working memory and visual symbol – sound associations from long term memory
- Retrieval from long term memory
- Sustained and focused attention
- Auditory processing of tonal sweeps
- Auditory and visual–spatial working memory
- Sequencing ability of rapidly presented sound pairs
- Auditory and linguistic processing at word level
- Phonological memory.