Fast ForWord For Adults

What is Fast ForWord?

Fast ForWord was developed by neuroscientists over a 35 year period to exercise the fundamental skills required for reading and learning. While it is mainly used to help children with reading, it is also used for brain injury, e.g., stroke victims, and by adults.
Adult reading programs

The Fast ForWord program 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 of any age reads.

How Fast ForWord Works

Fast ForWord software exercises the underlying cognitive skills required for reading. It is not one program, it is a family of products. The two major goals for the program are:

• Re mapping of cognitive skills to strengthen decoding skills. These skills are exercised in Fast ForWord Literacy and Fast ForWord Literacy Advanced.

• Learning to think critically while reading. Reading 3, 4 and 5 use categorization, missing word and sentence to picture matching exercises to train the brain to question and analyze what is being read, while reading.

Here are some screen shots and program summaries. The first chart shows the normal progression through the program. The charts below have details on the individual programs in that progression.

Fast ForWord Literacy

• Sequential processing and working memory skills
• Advanced language structures
• Highly demanding sustained attention tasks

These cognitive skills are developed to the minimum level required for reading in Literacy -- most adults find Fast ForWord Literacy challenging -- and then pushed to their biological limits in Literacy Advanced.
Fast ForWord Literacy

Fast ForWord Reading Level 3

Fast ForWord Reading Level 3 is the first in the Fast ForWord reading series for most adults. With a focus on dexterity in language, vocabulary, word forms, and spelling conventions this product develops basic reading comprehension skills.

Using an exclusive patented technology to help students build cognitive skills in the context of essential reading skills, Fast ForWord Reading Level 3 exercises includes:

• Phonology and spelling
• Structure of written language and vocabulary
• Cause and effect relationships in written text
• Paragraph comprehension

Fast ForWord Reading Level 3

Fast ForWord Reading Level 4
Faster Comprehension, Expanded Vocabulary

Fast ForWord Reading Level 4 exercises expand reading skills with a focus on applying knowledge of word origins, word forms, sentence structures, and punctuation rules to improve comprehension.

It continues the development of cognitive skills but presented in the context of reading.

Fast ForWord Reading Level 4 exercises use exclusive patented technology to help students build cognitive skills in the context of essential reading skills including:

• Decoding
• Spelling
• Vocabulary
• Sentence Comprehension
• Paragraph comprehension

Fast ForWord Reading Level 4

Fast ForWord Reading Level 5
Critical Reading and Thinking Skills

Fast ForWord Reading Level 5 exercises focus on advanced reading comprehension and vocabulary skills. Most adults find this Fast ForWord program to be so challenging that most do not complete all exercises. In particular, the exercises that exercise metacognition -- critical thinking while reading -- present reading in a new way for most adults. Other reading skills exercised include:

• Advanced practice in phonemic analysis, spelling and decoding
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension strategies
• Complex sentence construction and comprehension
• Passage construction, organization and comprehension

Fast ForWord for adults, where Literacy through to Reading Level 5 is completed, typically takes 3-4 months to complete, using a 30 minute a day protocol.
Fast ForWord Reading Level 5