English Language Learners (ELL) | Scientific Learning

Putting a second language ahead.

The number of English Language Learners in U.S. schools increases every day. Scientific Learning products accelerate the learning process, allowing ELL students to become successful learners in the classroom.

The Fast ForWord® Program

The Fast ForWord program can have a tremendous impact on the acquisition of the English language for ELL students and the schools that teach them.

Fast ForWord exercises improve brain processing efficiency so that individual phonemes within words can be more easily differentiated. This greatly speeds up the process of learning and comprehending both spoken and written English, building fluency, vocabulary, syntax, grammar, and other language skills.

By strengthening both processing efficiency and English language skills, our software is helping these students make significant academic gains in 8 to12 weeks.

Scientific Learning® Reading Assistant™ software

Reading Assistant software acts as a patient, non-judgmental listener for struggling, often self-conscious English Language Learners. Privately, English Language Learners can practice reading aloud developing oral language skills.

Using research-validated speech recognition technology, Reading Assistant software “listens” as a student reads out loud. When the student is challenged by a word, the software simply provides an example of correct pronunciation.

Reading Assistant software provides extra support to ELL students in the form of pre-recorded passages read fluently by a professional narrator and interactive, multimedia vocabulary support. Emphasis is placed on sound prosodic elements. Spanish translations of vocabulary words are also included.

Audio files of each student’s reading are easily captured and archived, providing teachers and students with individualized before and after comparisons of a student’s reading. These archives clearly document a student’s gains in reading fluency over an instructional period, providing both motivation and reward for the student’s hard work, as well as evidence of progress.

For students new to English, Reading Assistant Curriculum Levels 1.5-5 introduces 7,000 vocabulary words. For more advanced students, Reading Assistant Curriculum Levels 5-11 provides over 150 reading passages covering areas tested in key American tests like the TABE, the NAEP and the SAT. The program builds essential academic vocabulary that will help English Language Learners develop lasting proficiency.

Listen to before-and-after examples of students reading

“While the student may not remember how they sounded three months ago, the system will – and hearing the difference will motivate ELL students all over again."

ELL students have the challenge of learning language while simultaneously developing content knowledge. Scientific Learning products provide teachers with additional support in the classroom to help their ELL students become successful learners.

Learn more:

Progress Demo

Student reading a passage for the first time.

Flash Player 6 or Higher Not Detected

We are unable to detect Flash Player 6 or higher on your system.
(Flash Player 6 or higher is required for this presentation)

Download most recent version of Flash Player

Click the play button to start and the pause button to stop. Pause one Progress Demo before playing the other.

Student reading the same passage 45 minutes later.