Fast ForWord Software

Fast ForWord is cognitive software that targets the primary causes of reading and learning difficulties, including dyslexia. Because it works at a fundamental level it is able to help students at all academic levels and has helped over one million students have used the Fast ForWord program over the last decade.

The software, which actually is a series of cognitive and reading programs, uses sophisticated algorithms that adapt to every click, adding speed and complexity at each student's own pace. This produces an engaging experience and the intensity needed to create new neural connections and truly change how a student reads and learns. Fast ForWord is able to make changes in learning that go far beyond what a tutor can achieve.
Fast ForWord Individual Program Details

How It Works

The processing accuracy required to effortlessly hear and decode every sound inside every word when reading is beyond many students and adults without intervention. Fast ForWord meets this widespread need.

Fast ForWord exercises auditory processing and other critical cognitive skills to automate the reading and learning process. It works the same way learning any skill works -- repetition with increasing difficulty. Each day the student is prompted to make hundreds of increasingly more complex decisions in quick succession, using the neuroscience principles of frequency, intensity, and shaping -- progress in tiny incremental steps.
Targeted Skills

Fast ForWord is adaptive, testing a wide number of skills, moving quickly through the exercises that are not needed to those that best meet his or her specific learning needs. Once mastered, these new skills are used every day and so they endure. This is a distinct difference to tutoring which does not address underlying difficulties and so requires an ongoing commitment.

How Fast ForWord Helps Reading

Fast ForWord is a suite of programs, in two phases: cognitive training, then reading mechanics.  The first one or two programs (depending on age and need) build the essential cognitive skills required for reading.

Students then move onto the Fast ForWord Reading series to apply these new skills to the task of reading. There are five age-appropriate programs that cover spelling, syntax, vocabulary, reading comprehension and critical reading. The programs help our students learn (or re-learn) how to read in a normal way that makes the most of the cognitive skills developed in the first phase.
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How Fast ForWord Helps Learning

By speeding up auditory processing Fast ForWord effectively slows the world down for students, making learning easier. Students experience gains in confidence and improved learning skills leading to homework independence, better grades from better test taking skills, an the ability to engage and follow instruction in class, amongst other gains.
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The Science

Fast ForWord research combines the ground-breaking cognitive research of Paula Tallal on how children read and learn with the neuroscience of Dr. Merzenich's whose work on brain plasticity and how best to coax the brain to adapt and learn differently is world renowned.

There are a number of documented Fast ForWord study results that show a consistent ability to help students at varying academic levels. Fast ForWord Language and other programs in this innovative software product suite address a widespread need.
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Gemm provides this software in a convenient, affordable and customer friendly service to students working at home in the US and Canada.
Learn more about Fast ForWord at home

For a Fast ForWord brochure, click here.