I was trying to think how I could explain the difference between Earobics and FastForWord eloquently, yet accurately, but then I realized I'd just seen my good friend Mary, who is an educator and in private practice (so she could stay home and home-school her severly dyslexic daughter), had just done this on yahoo's dyslexia2 board. So here is her quote. My child has used both programs, and he is in first grade. Even for him, it is a struggle to get him to do Earobics.
"There is a huge difference between Earobics and FFW. They have
completely different delivery systems, for one thing. Earobics is
simple voice technology. FFW sounds are modulated using
sophisticated equipment that dramatically changes the frequency and
other characteristics of the sounds. Earobics can be duplicated by
simple human interaction, but FFW cannot. Earobics is a simple
click-through the exercises program. FFW interactively adjusts to
the responses. If a student makes 3 correct responses in a row, the
program automatically adjusts the difficulty level upwards
slightly. If a student misses 2 responses in a row, the program
automatically adjusts the difficulty level downwards.
In my opinion, Earobics is suitable only for pre-readers or perhaps
readers at a 1st grade level, and it is primarily suitable for
children under a mental age of 7. Older than that, and it is so
stifling in its boredom that I don't see how anyone could sustain
enough attention to makes its practice worthwhile.
In short, it's not just that FFW is more intense than Earobics. It
really works in a different way than Earobics.
3. The progress from FFW does not actually come from listening more
carefully. Rather, FFW trains the brain to process the sounds of
speech more efficiently. It does this by starting the child out
with very sllooowww sounds (they are actually stretched out by the
modulating technology applied to them), and incrementally adjusting
the speed upwards. For example, the pitch exercise starts out with
the two pitches being sounded out for rather a long time (and the
child has to indicate which is the higher or lower pitch). By the
end of the program, the pitches are sounded for extremely short
intervals and very close together, so that discrimination has to
take place very quickly.
Earobics has a pitch exercise also that works in much the same way.
However, the absence of interactivity makes it less effective for
children who need this kind of work. With FFW, if a child is having
a bad day, the program will automatically drop down to a level at
which he can be successful, and then just slightly challenge him.
Since learning takes place most efficiently when there is just a
slight challenge (one can succeed 80-90% of the time), FFW still
provides a training effect on bad days. Earobics, on the other
hand, will simply stay at the child's frustration level on the bad
day."
