Sonic Learning case studies and program reviews

What prompted you to look into Fast ForWord?

Asha was experiencing academic difficulties across all areas. She had working memory and processing speed difficulties. After she was diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), the Audiologist recommended the Fast ForWord program, so we decided to do it.

What results have you seen?

Ultimately the hard work has paid off, because when we went of her parent teacher interview a few weeks ago, before we asked, the teachers commented on how much she’s improved in her spelling and reading comprehension. It was one of those moments where we went “oh, we’ve done the right thing”. Her teachers have commented that there have been dramatic changes in spelling and reading comprehension, but even her Maths is also starting to improve. Each week they do mental maths testing and the results of those have improved too. Her teacher said she’d doing so well with spelling that she’s going to start giving her more words.

Asha’s confidence has increased. Her initial answer to a question is no longer “I don’t know,” she now has a go at answering or comes up with ideas herself. Her friendships at school have improved as well. When they gain confidence in one area it extends to others.

What did you like about the program?

I liked that there were a variety of exercises for my daughter to do. It was hard work and sometimes a bit repetitive but that’s necessary in order to get the gains. The time commitment was significant – 5 days a week for 13 weeks, but with a bit of bribery we got there in the end. Apart from the positive benefits, there were certain games I liked more than others. I liked the comprehension games, it really amazed me how well she did at them. I liked the game where she had to follow instructions because she really struggles with that. Sometimes the American nature of the program meant that there were some words which a bit different from what we usually say, but once I told Asha what they were she was ok.

How did you support your daughter through the program?

We always sat at the computer with Asha for her lesson with the exception of the last couple of weeks. Sitting with her was time consuming but worth it – those words of encouragement we gave her, like “great work, keep going” and “great job, click the next one” – those things made a difference to her motivation.

Before the program, she was way behind the rest of her class in reading and was only at level 9 but now she’s up to level 24! Something has clicked and we couldn’t be more pleased.

We’ve noticed a huge improvement in her behaviour too – she’s much happier and more positive now whereas before she was very grumpy. Now she feels a sense of accomplishment and is more confident in the classroom. Her teacher says Sophia can concentrate for longer and complete her work on time.

Even though Sophia loved the games, it can be tiring but when you see the great results, it makes it all worthwhile and I definitely wouldn’t hesitate to do it all over again! I strongly recommend the program to other parents and just wish that more parents and teachers knew about Fast ForWord so other children can benefit from the program like Sophia has.”

Watch Carla’s video interview:

This term, Joe was given a merit award ‘for making leaps and bounds in his spelling and reading progress’. He also scored 98% in his latest dictation test when previously he was only averaging around 65%. Within a 9 month period (including 6 months on Fast ForWord), Joe’s spelling has improved by 2 years 1 month and his reading by 1 year 9 months. Joe’s reading has become much more fluent and expressive and he has become excited about reading. Joe is now better focused and is eager to complete the task in front of him. His attitude to learning has improved. He is now proud of his work which is evidenced by how much neater his handwriting has become and his eagerness to show off his completed tasks. We have also noticed subtle improvements in Joe’s language skills in conversation. Family, friends and school teachers have noticed how Joe has become more confident and more willing to give things a go. Joe is now a confident learner. We are very proud of him.

His teachers thanked me for my commitment to improving Joe’s learning but I have to thank Joe for all his efforts and for trying his hardest every session because he knew it was helping his learning. The flexibility of being able to do the program at home was great particularly because Joe has two younger sisters. The support we received from the Sonic Learning team was of a very high standard. I felt confident Sonic Learning understood my son’s learning issues and would be able to help improve his future learning. They were always up to date with Joe’s progress and answered any questions I had. Joe liked trying to beat his previous days score the following day and I liked that the program was driven by him. I felt confident all throughout Joe’s training that we had chosen the right program for our son to assist his future learning abilities. I also liked the one on one time with my son and seeing him recognizing that the effort he was putting into Fast ForWord was paying off in his literacy.”

Joe, 7 years old completed 6 months of Fast ForWord training. After finishing, Joe said “Since doing Fast ForWord I have become much better at spelling, writing and reading. Fast ForWord has helped me a lot at school. I liked all the games but my favourite games were Whalien Match, which helped my memory and Chicken Dog, which helped my spelling”.

Angus has Autism and ADD, his sensory and auditory processing needs as well as being a late talker has made English skills difficult for him to learn. Previously if we gave Angus more then one simple instruction at a time (i.e. please put away your hat, then have a drink of water) Angus would get very frustrated and confused as he couldn’t process all this information at once. Also Angus would often say to us that when we spoke he would hear the words but they were mixed up in his head.

Since doing Fast ForWord Angus is able to listen to and understand 3 step instructions, and no longer complains about words being mixed up in his mind. He does not need as much prompting now as his attention and working memory has improved, allowing him to understand and process tasks more easily.

Previously Angus could not understand the sounds that made up a word, but now he has a much better understanding of these sounds which has resulted in a big increase in the amount of words he can read and the rate at which he reads these words. It also means that his spelling has improved immensely and he is no longer too frustrated by the thought of even trying to spell a word on his own. Fast ForWord has also greatly increased the amount of sight words Angus knows.

This program has seen such a huge increase in Angus’ English skills, as well as in his auditory processing skills that I would certainly recommend this program to other families.”

Leanne, Angus’ Mum

Prior to that, we noticed that his sustained auditory attention had improved slightly and has continued to improve as well. A couple of days ago, I played a word game with him; where one of us would say a word and the other would continue with the last sound of that word. He was really engaged with that. We’ve noticed too that he’s paying closer attention to the sounds and is enunciating that better including ending consonants as well. He’s getting better at listening with accuracy too.

Oh yes, one huge improvement noted in school with his level readers: During the course of Fast ForWord, he’s moved two levels up in his readers. We’ve celebrated his achievement and accredited to his brain being changed and worked on through his hard work in attempting the activities in Fast ForWord.

Thank you so much for your correspondence and to the team for keeping us updated about his progress. We have been most pleased and have actually recommended and conducted the demo games to a couple of parents as well.

– Gabriel, Ethan’s Dad

Aidan was diagnosed with Asperger’s just before his 3rd birthday and shortly after with ADHD.

Our Occupational Therapist recommended we try Fast ForWord as a part of his therapy program. We did 5 months of training and with great persistence and by using Minecraft as a daily reward, Aidan was able to work through almost 5 programs in the series!

It is great to see Aidan so proud of himself and his achievements, especially with spelling. He has surpassed many of his peers who are still working on blends whereas he is able to remember and spell tricky words like “treasure” and “science”.

We know there will be more work to do in the coming years but we are very happy with how Fast ForWord has helped Aidan so far.

Leo recently received an achievement award from his school for his creative ideas when writing a narrative. Leo even told me that he is finding it easy to concentrate at school and keep his focus. Each night, we have been reading Harry Potter and after we finish, he has independently started reading ahead. If he comes to a word he doesn’t know, he highlights it for us to discuss later or sometimes he will use a dictionary to look up the meaning of the word.

Angela, Leo’s mother

J had poor short term memory and struggled with spelling and the sounds in words and had little confidence in reading. His confidence in his own ability has shone and his teacher and I have noticed improvement in his memory – he got 8/8 for all his spelling tests over the last few months. Some of his problems had been due to not being confident enough to try and spell the word, in this we have seen a great improvement. I listened to Fast ForWord with J and I saw his improvement not only on the graphs but also in his ability to hear the sounds in the words. His reading out loud has improved heaps too. Overall he loved doing the program and was always eager to do it, I saw his confidence grow and I saw his work at school improve and he enjoys school more!

H is in year 5 and his biggest problem was his attention span and the ability to settle down into a routine to get some homework done. When he first started the program I heard continuing complaining about how he didn’t like it and it took to long etc. However by the end of 3 months, he would rush in after school to get his Sonic finished and then his homework! He has learnt how to focus and concentrate, they have noticed it at school too. I am going to miss the 50 mins of peace I got when we first got home from school! I have also noticed the confidence in reading bigger novels to enjoy them instead of just reading the smallest novels to get the teachers off his back, also Sonic really helped him overall in English, especially vocabulary and reading comprehension. Thank You Sonic!

We have been amazed at how well he can now do the games – not only in accuracy but speed! He also is now much kinder to the poor little computer mouse (it doesn’t get thrown down on the table quite as often or as hard).

Jacob has only just started linking the names and sounds of letters and I think the Fast ForWord program is contributing to this. The Fast ForWord program is something that he asks to do every day and although he has the occasional meltdown, he still comes back to do it. Fast ForWord has been the only intervention program that we have started to date, so we give full credit to it. It has provided us with a platform to focus on other interventions such as speech therapy and anger management.

He had great difficulty speaking, and hence writing a sentence was extremely difficult if not impossible. We were very concerned for him and felt that he is a very bright boy but didn’t know why he had so much trouble with the spoken word. He learnt to read without too much difficulty in fact he was a very good reader before he finished grade prep last year but he couldn’t understand what he was able to read and his reading was a good parlour trick nothing more. We decided to try Fast ForWord because it was a hopeful option and we really didn’t know where else to go.

In the past few months since finishing the Fast ForWord program, we have noticed an increased ability of Morohni to understand instructions given to him. He has begun to listen to spoken words with more intensity and increased understanding and interaction with others. He is more able to understand the written word and can now follow simple written instructions. He is able to repeat a simple story into his own words. His maths and English have improved. His receptive language has improved almost impossibly in such a short time. The greatest miracle of all time occurred just a few days ago when he wrote a story at school. He has written stories before, but while he may have understood them, they were unintelligible to everyone else. This story however was complete, understandable and imaginative. He repeated this miracle again just a few days later. Thank you to all of you for the program that has created life for this little boy. You have given him the ability to progress so fast that our heads are still spinning. We will most certainly be back for our second dose some time in the next year. I thought you might like to know you are my heroes.

Kath, Morohni’s grandmother

Cass: We did cooking.
Me: What did you cook?
Cass: Cookies
Me: How many?
Cass: 9
Me: What did they look like?
Cass: They were white cookies.

Although it doesn’t sound like much, it is a HUGE change for us.

Cassidy has also sucked her fingers since she was a baby. We spent a lot of time telling her to take her fingers out of her mouth. However, whenever she was watching television, using the computer, sitting in the car etc, the fingers were camped in her mouth. A few weeks ago I noticed that I hadn’t been prompting her to remove her fingers from her mouth for a while. I asked others and we all realised that we hadn’t been saying anything for a few weeks. I’m happy to say that the fingers seemed to have permanently been removed from her mouth. This has only happened since beginning the program.

So having explained more about who Cassidy is, we fully expected her to take much longer on the program than other children, and we have been quite surprised at her progress. Her level of comprehension has also markedly improved and is much higher than we realised.

Her teachers say she is listening better and she got an A+ in her last school report for her written work!

A follow-up auditory processing test showed excellent results for all skills – including listening in noisy environments, processing speed and memory. I’m so happy with the effort Nicole has put in and what she has achieved using this program.

“If anyone is finding school work hard then they should do this program. It has helped me become smarter and now I find school work easier, and most of the games are fun!” Nicole

James started school in pre-primary full of enthusiasm, a great curiosity and desire to learn. Unfortunately he was the target of antisocial behaviour from some of the other children, which soon became bullying as the children grew older.

When he ‘downed tools’, and stopped working half way through year 2, we assumed it was a reaction to the ongoing battle we were fighting, to stop the actions of one dominating child. Two weeks before entering year 3 he rebelled, and with tears streaming down his face he screamed he would not go back to school! We persuaded him to return, and his new teacher kept him coming back for more of an extremely innovative program, despite the bullying. However, even he could not get James to spell, and do more than the smallest amount of written work.

James’s WALNA (now NAPLAN) test results indicated he was high in maths and reading but much lower in spelling and writing. Fast ForWord was suggested as a way to retrain his brain to process sounds efficiently and improve his literacy skills.

James adored the computer program, but we were stunned when he volunteered to do up to four hours per day during the school holidays, so he could, as he put it, ‘return to school feeling normal’. He started to tackle year 4, enjoying maths in particular, and was even willing to do homework, including language studies, which he had refused before.

He has flourished and now volunteers to stay ahead with homework assignments, and is showing the creativity that he displayed when very young. His spelling is still not good, but it is improving now that he is doing more than the bare minimum of work, and seeking to communicate in different genres.

James is a different child! Of course he still has to give his new classmates time to get used to him, so that he can develop friendships, but now he feels he can do the work, and will produce amazing examples when he feels inspired.

We have no regrets as it was worth every cent spent and more. Just the opportunity to sort out a problem, before James’s education was so severely impaired as to be permanently damaged, was priceless. Everyone at Sonic was extremely helpful and patient, answering questions and sending reports about James’s progress. I wish we had realised what the problem was much earlier, however James’s situation was confusing. For us, Fast ForWord was the miracle we needed. We have our chirpy, imaginative son back, and now we only have to deal with the usual overconfidence or stubbornness of youth.

When asked what he would say to others in his position James replied, “Don’t worry. Sonic will help you. Fast ForWord was great fun to do, and now I can hear and understand. Don’t give up! If I can do it, so can you! School is awesome now! Schoolwork is harder than it would be for an ordinary Year 4, but I can handle it.”

I never thought Michael would read for pleasure – now I can’t get him to stop! Despite having a high verbal IQ, Michael found reading and spelling tasks difficult and he had significant issues with his memory and phonological awareness skills. After reading the book “The Brain that Changes Itself”, we decided to try the Fast ForWord program.

Following the first block of training, we saw gains in his reading, spelling, memory and phonological awareness skills and each time he completes another block of training, we notice even greater improvements.

Fast ForWord allowed us to visually see Michael’s areas of strength and where he needed some extra assistance. We could take this information to his Speech Pathologist and Occupational Therapist to help guide their interventions, to consolidate his skills in these areas.

Of all the interventions Michael has undertaken, nothing has achieved more immediate and significant gains than Fast ForWord. He has moved up to a higher spelling stream and is enjoying all of his subjects – even Social Studies now that he can remember dates and the names of people. He has improved so much that he doesn’t have any trouble with decoding or reading. We are looking forward to seeing his NAPLAN results and, when he takes the test this year, he won’t need an assistant to help him read.

He really enjoyed the graphics as they appealed to his funny sense of humour and I loved the fact that we could do it at home without having to drive all over town. It was great for me to be involved as well as it can make you feel pretty helpless not knowing how to help your child.

Michael’s school was fantastic and reduced his homework load so he could focus his attention on completing Fast ForWord each day. As Michael has gotten older, his time management skills have improved through the use of Fast ForWord and his teacher has commented on how well and long he can pay attention for now.

I am grateful that Fast ForWord enabled me to provide Michael with a tailored program that worked on exactly the areas where he needed to improve.

Sarah, Michael’s mum

FR has always been exposed to different languages but in the last few years, we’ve noticed that he had speech delays in both Italian and English and he didn’t talk very much. He wasn’t very confident and didn’t like to make mistakes – sometimes he wouldn’t even have a go in class if he knew he might answer a question incorrectly.

I didn’t know what to expect from FR when he first started the Fast ForWord program. At the start, we set up our goals next to the computer so that every day, FR could be reminded of why he was doing the Fast ForWord program.

Truthfully, we were looking for a miracle and although FR still has some areas to improve, we could not have expected how much he has gained from the program. His confidence and concentration have greatly improved and he is doing really well in all subjects at school. We knew that the program would be a commitment for the both us but we were prepared.

He needed help with some of the exercises so I made sure I tried lots of different strategies to help him. We kept a good routine to train for the 5 days per week.

His teacher has told me that his writing and spelling have really improved and we are looking forward to seeing his NAPLAN results this year.

N has always hated reading, despite attempts to provide him with high interest, low level texts.

About three quarters of the way through the training he began to take off with his reading in a way we never thought would happen. He now chooses to read as a leisure activity which at age 12 we thought was just never going to happen after 7 years of so much reluctance. He is now reading the same book as his whole class and more than anything, it is his ability to share an academic achievement with his peers that excites him. We have noticed other improvements as well and we are trying to make the most of these now to support his difficulty with spelling and writing. I am aware that the more he reads, the better he will spell and write. So a strength in reading will support other areas. I cannot thank you all enough for the steady stream of emails that provided both N and myself with all the information we needed. We will be recommending your service and programs to friends and family.

Mrs A., University Lecturer for Early Childhood Development

Chenae’s teachers had commented when she was younger that she was having trouble learning sound to letter correspondences and whilst she could give complex answers verbally, she struggled to convey those ideas on paper. People said not to worry, she would grow out of it, or that she would catch up in her own time but I was worried that she would slip through the cracks and needed some answers to help her, sooner rather than later.

It took several different assessments, speaking to specialists and professionals until one day I discovered some information on Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD). She seemed to fit the profile and was confirmed to have some auditory processing weaknesses after being assessed by an Audiologist.

Naturally, we wanted to do whatever we could – I had heard of the Fast For Word Program before, but never really understood a lot about it, and it was recommended to us as it specifically targeted Chenae’s difficulties.

Although it seemed a bit daunting, the program was super easy to set up. I liked that the exercises are pre-programmed and all Chenae had to do was log on to the computer and start training. Even I have had a bit of a brain workout just from watching her do the program! We used a rewards system from the start because the training is hard work and it does take commitment. We have used little things like sticker books and movie nights as ways to help motivate Chenae to do her best with the training. She liked the graphics and particularly loved the expressions on the animals’ faces in one of the exercises. We have seen so many changes.

Her self-confidence has improved and her teacher is amazed at her marked improvement. Homework used to be a constant battle and could take hours because Chenae struggled to remember word lists or information she’d just read and would often say ‘I don’t get it’ and ‘I can’t remember what I’m reading’. It was difficult to watch her struggle on a daily basis. Now, she is not having to turn the page back and forth and is great to see the improvements in her self-esteem. Thanks to the massive changes we have seen, we have signed Chenae up to do some more training!”

Jeni, Chenae’s mother

Last year, Lachlan really struggled with reading to the point he actively avoided it. We even got to the stage where we were downloading apps for him with pictures only because reading was such a chore. Thankfully, things started to turn around when Lachlan started the Reading Recovery program at school. He was later assessed and diagnosed with Auditory Processing difficulties and the Fast ForWord program was recommended. As a Primary School Teacher, I could see that the program specifically targeted the areas with which he was struggling. It made me feel very confident that I had chosen the right program to train his brain to give him the skills he needed.

During the training, we could see that Lachlan was progressing with the program but it was hard to determine if the training was translating to his learning at school as there were no massive changes initially. However, after finishing the program, we started to notice some big changes! He is now actively reading, even to the point where he reads signs out loud when we’re watching movies. Fast ForWord played a big part in developing Lachlan’s reading skills. His teacher has told me his reading has really improved and he is likely to move up to a C grade for reading now.

Shane, Lachlan’s father

It only takes a couple of nights to learn 15 words and he hands them in all proud and is tested and receives reward points. He is only four pages off learning all the sight words for the whole year! Before the program it would take the same words three weeks to learn and even then a week later he would have forgotten them. He is now one of the best readers in his class. I am just amazed.

Skye struggled with literacy at school. Her ADHD also meant that she did not pay attention all the time. Her vocabulary, although improving, was small compared to her peers. Because she struggled so much with reading, she became anxious every time she had to read.

We chose the Fast ForWord program for Skye after reading the book “The Brain That Changes Itself” that ‘spoke’ highly of the Fast ForWord program. It sounded like a very good thing to try. I also read 2 journal articles and the research showed that Fast ForWard showed improvement in some areas of development for children with learning difficulties. Skye’s self confidence with regards to her reading has improved a lot since we’ve started the Fast ForWord program.

Skye used to shy away from reading and although she will still not voluntary take a book and read it, she does enjoy reading a lot more. Her vocabulary has improved tremendously and this has boosted her self-esteem a lot. Her reading fluency has improved, although the speed at which she reads/process things still needs some attention. An overall improvement in the way she tackles new and difficult things as well as resilience are some of the most noticeable things we see in her. Thanks Fast ForWord, my daughter has learned and improved a lot.

Skye shows a lot of improvement in areas of her development. She shows a lot more enthusiasm with activities at school and is slowly but surely catching up with her peers in most of the areas she had trouble with.

The program was easy to understand and most of the games were enjoyable for Skye. She learned a lot and when introduced to new things at school and even mentioned a couple of times that she already know that word/s from Fast ForWord. It was engaging and challenging and fun all at the same time.

I liked most of the games, but some was difficult. I learned a lot of words and the games made it fun. – Skye

Harris has always struggled with language and reading since year two and primary school was very difficult for him. We’ve been to see lots of different experts and eventually they diagnosed him with dyslexia. We tried a few programs and saw no real results. Then I read Norman Doidge’s book on neuroplasticity, The Brain that Changes Itself. In the book he speaks very highly of the Fast ForWord program so we decided to push on with the program under our own motivation.

Once Harris got started it took him a little while to get motivated but then he really got into it. In fact he asked when we’re going to start Fast ForWord again so I think we may do another block in the summer holidays.

Harris really loved the fact that it was interactive and it actually improved his motivation. He liked the feedback that showed him how he was progressing and that he could measure his own performance and improvement against a benchmark.

As his parents we liked that he was able to work independently and that his results were purely based on his own efforts. We didn’t have to help or prompt him at all. We found Fast ForWord to be an excellent vehicle to enable his brain to read and retain information very easily. Certainly his results in reading at school now don’t suggest that he has ever had any difficulties with reading.

The advice I can give to other parents is to give it time and persevere. Harris trained for a total of 12 months and initially we only noticed very small improvements. However in the last 3 months is when the big changes occurred as those neural pathways were cemented. We are extremely happy with the results and would like to thank Sonic Learning for their help.

Sean, Harris’s father

As a child, Max was a thinker and we couldn’t believe some of the things he would say. He seemed to have a level of wisdom that was beyond his years. I guess we expected him to sail through school without any problems.

My husband and I put his learning problems down to Max being a boy. I guess we thought that he was just being lazy and he’d catch up in his own time. But we started to worry a year and a half later when he was even further behind and it was really affecting his self esteem. He didn’t want to go to school and he was getting into trouble more and more frequently.

He did tutoring for a year, which helped a bit, but it didn’t hit the nail on the head. We could see that something was holding Max back. It was like he had a traffic jam in his head and the information wasn’t getting through. It wasn’t until he had some specialised tests that we found out that he had an underlying learning problem.

The reason we chose to put Max on the Fast ForWord program is because it’s not just another tutoring program. What appealed to us most was the fact that it works on all aspects of learning – it trained his short and long term memory, his ability to focus for increasingly longer periods, his ability to follow more and more complex instructions, as well as his reading, spelling and comprehension skills. The program really got him to think and concentrate and he enjoyed doing it because as far as he was concerned, he was playing fun computer games.

My husband did a lot of research before we decided to go ahead with the Fast ForWord program and we were very impressed by the fact that this program was developed by neuroscientists and had a lot of supporting research and results.

We liked the flexibility of Max being able to train at home, particularly since we have two other children, and Sonic Learning’s team was fantastic in keeping an eye on how he was progressing and sending us reports each week. I can’t recommend this program enough.

Her attention span has improved and her teachers are impressed. Her grades have not gone up drastically but her attitude towards completing school tasks has improved so I guess because she is finishing her work faster, her grades will improve in the long run. I am shocked really at how well this has worked.

Kylie, Gemma’s mother