Improved Reading Skills and Behavior in Primary School Students who Used Fast ForWord® Language at a Singapore Public School

Purpose: This study investigated the use of the Fast ForWord Language product as a reading intervention for students with reading problems alone or with auditory processing disorders (APD) and reading problems. Study Design: This study used a pre-test/post-test correlational design to explore the relationship between pre-intervention status (APD or non-APD) and intervention outcomes. A battery of commercially available, standardized or criterion-referenced tests was used to evaluate outcomes. Participants: Study participants were poor readers ranging in age from 6.5 to 10 years old, recruited from a public primary school in Singapore. The participants included an equal number of students with APD and without APD. Materials & Implementation: Following staff training on the Fast ForWord products, students used the Fast ForWord Language product over a period of 5 weeks. Before and after Fast ForWord Language use, student skills were evaluated with a test battery comprising the SCAN-C Test for Auditory Processing Disorders In Children-Revised, the Phonological Awareness subtest from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4 Edition, the Test of Word Reading Efficiency, and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to identify significant performance gains and differences in improvement across the APD and non-APD groups. Results: On average, the students who used the Fast ForWord Language product made significant improvements in auditory processing, phonemic awareness, phonological decoding, sight word reading, and attention/conduct as measured by the test battery, with no significant differences between the improvements of the APD and non-APD groups. The improvements on early reading skills were quite substantial: on average, students with auditory processing disorders improving their sightword reading from around the 13 percentile to the 27 percentile, while students without auditory processing disorders improved from 25 percentile to the 52.