The Fast ForWord Language exercises cover four primary skill areas including listening accuracy, phonologial awareness, working memory, and language structures. The following examples demonstrate three of the Fast ForWord Language exercises, Circus Sequence, Phonic Match, and Language Comprehension Builder. We recommend that you use headphones rather than built-in computer speakers in order to listen under the high-fidelity conditions recommended to our student users.
Circus Sequence
Circus Sequence presents two sounds, an upward-sweeping sound and a downward-sweeping sound, in various combinations (up-up, down-down, up-down, or down-up). The participant clicks the sound button to hear two sweep sounds. The participant must identify which sounds were presented by clicking the up arrow to indicate an up sweep, and the down arrow to indicate a down sweep.
Circus Sequence's Goals
The goals of Circus Sequence are to:
- Improve the speed at which the participant identifies and understands rapid, successive changes in sound (listening accuracy)
- Improve the participant's ability to hold sounds in memory (working memory)
How Circus Sequence Accomplishes Its Goals
Circus Sequence helps the participant develop listening accuracy by presenting sweep sounds at different frequencies, durations, and with different lengths of time between sounds. The frequencies and durations of the sound sweeps correspond to the rapid transitions in the sounds of the English language.
Circus Sequence first presents sounds of durations longer than those typically found in natural speech. As the participant progresses, Circus Sequence decreases the duration of the sound sweeps in order to challenge the participant and improve his or her rate of processing.
Circus Sequence presents sweep sounds at three different frequencies. As the participant progresses, Circus Sequence also decreases the length of time between sound sweeps.
Circus Sequence helps the participant improve working memory by challenging the participant to keep the sweep sounds in mind while indicating the pattern just heard.
Click the buttons below to listen to the varying rates of sound sweeps at progressive stages of the Circus Sequence exercise:
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Try an animated demo of the Circus Sequence exercise.
Phonic Match
Phonic Match presents a grid of picture tiles. A word, such as duck, or syllable, such as ra, is associated with each tile. The participant must find each tile's match (for instance, find the two tiles associated with duck) and clear the grid.
Phonic Match's Goals
The goals of Phonic Match are to:
- Improve the participant's ability to hold sounds in memory (working memory)
- Increase the speed at which the participant identifies and understands rapid, successive changes in sound (listening accuracy)
- Improve identification and discrimination of phonemes (phonological awareness)
- Improve the participant's ability to recognize spoken words (auditory word recognition)
How Phonic Match Accomplishes Its Goals
Phonic Match develops working memory by helping the participant learn to hold a syllable or word in memory while searching for its match.
Phonic Match accomplishes this goal by presenting a 2 x 2 grid of 4 tiles that show pictures unrelated to the associated syllables or words. When the participant clicks a tile, the associated word, such as tuck, is heard but not seen. The participant must hold this word in mind while clicking the next tile. If the next tile presents a word, such as duck, that does not match the first word, the participant must also hold this word in mind while clicking the next tile. As the participant progresses in this exercise, Phonic Match presents a 3 x 3 grid of 8 tiles (the 9th tile is missing); as the participant progresses further, Phonic Match presents a 4 x 4 grid of 16 tiles.
Phonic Match helps the participant develop phonological awareness by presenting syllables and words that differ in initial or final consonants (duck, tuck; sha, ra; pub, pup). Phonic Match first presents highly stretched and emphasized syllables and words where the duration of each phoneme has been increased (for example, la is initially presented as lllahhh) and where the intensity of each rapidly changing sound has been enhanced relative to the vowel sound. (A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech sound that distinguishes one speech sound from another. See Phonological Awareness.) As the participant progresses through the exercise, Phonic Match decreases the amount of stretch and emphasis, and eventually presents the syllables and words at the level of natural speech.
Phonic Match helps the participant develop listening accuracy by first presenting highly stretched and emphasized phonemes and adaptively decreasing the phoneme stretch and emphasis. Because words as well as syllables are presented, Phonic Match helps the participant develop auditory word recognition.
Try an animated demo of the Phonic Match exercise.
Language Comprehension Builder
The participant hears a sentence and sees two to four pictures that are possible representations of the sentence. The participant must identify and click the picture that represents the sentence.
Language Comprehension Builder's Goals
The goals of Language Comprehension Builder are to:
- Improve the participant's understanding of the relationship between words, grammar, and meaning (language structures)
- Improve the participant's understanding of the rules of English grammar
- Improve the participant's comprehension of rapid, successive speech in sentence context (listening accuracy)
How Language Comprehension Builder Accomplishes Its Goals
Language Comprehension Builder develops an understanding of language structures by helping the participant learn to attend to and understand spoken sentences in order to select visual representations of each sentence.
Language Comprehension Builder accomplishes this goal by presenting questions and sentences that involve a range of grammatical difficulty. The questions and sentences range from grammar level two to level eight; these levels roughly correspond to the age at which the grammar concepts in each group are typically mastered.
Language Comprehension Builder presents sentences and questions such as "Point to her" (level two) and "[Point to] The clown that is chasing the girl that is little is big" (level six). Questions and sentences from levels seven and eight (such as "[Point to] The cat is not being outrun by the dog") are presented throughout Language Comprehension Builder to expose the participant to more complex grammar, but the participant does not need to master levels seven and eight in order to advance in the exercise.
Language Comprehension Builder also helps the participant develop listening accuracy by first presenting highly stretched and emphasized words where the duration of each phoneme has been increased (for example, cat is initially presented as cccattt) and where the intensity of each rapidly changing sound (such as the /b/ in ba) has been enhanced relative to the vowel sound. As the participant progresses through the exercise, Language Comprehension Builder decreases the amount of stretch and emphasis, and eventually presents the words in natural speech.
| Simple Sentence: "The cup is broken." Click the buttons below to listen to the varying rates of processed speech for this simple sentence in the Language Comprehension Builder exercise. |  |
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| Complex Sentence: "The girl who the boy is pushing is happy." Click the buttons below to listen to the varying rates of processed speech for this complex sentence in the Language Comprehension Builder exercise. |  |
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