A Brief Review of FieldCraft's Speed Reading training software, Stretch.
Stretch uses old texts that were mostly published prior to 1928. These texts offer a greater range of writing styles and vocabulary and are aimed at immersing the student in a much deeper and richer vocabulary and grammar than s/he may be accustomed to in modern texts. This may well prove effective in combating the loss of reading skills (probably due to the contemporary deteriorarion of reading material) documented by Eurich (1980) and Eurich & Kraetsch (1982).
To aid the development of subject specific reading skills recommended by Incardone (1978), Latorre & Kaulen (1985), Stretch comes with a comprehensive range of texts covering a diverse variety of subjects. This application also includes an import and text rating facility to allow the student to use texts that are not supplied. In this, Stretch is geared to offer a wide range of vocational support for the development of discipline-specific reading skills.
Stretch is designed to flash more than one word at a time, allowing for phrase and clause recognition that will increase reading speed even further, as an extension of sight reading. The success of sight reading is widely documented (Kunst, 1987; Centre for Applied Linguistics & Centre for Language Education and Research, 1989a, 1989b, 1989c), (Wentink et. Al., 1997), (Hawkes, 1983), (Heydorn, 1984), (Cuvo & Klatt, 1992), (Cohen et. Al., 1988), Ehri & Roberts (1979), & (Tan & Nicholson, 1997).
Of interest, Didden et. Al. (2000) found that the use of pictorial prompts hindered rather than helped the acquisition of sight words. Hence there is a lack of pictorial and graphic distractions in Stretch. This application is focussed on the sight-reading method because extensive improvements in overall reading skills are documented as a result of this method (Monroe & Staunton, 2000; Henning & Pickett, 2000).
Due to the fact that Stretch flashes multiple words as parts of or the whole of a sentence, it exercises both reading speed and semantic understanding as the reading skills improve. The texts used by Stretch offer a wide vocabulary that is readily learned.
Stretch uses arcade style scoring, and keeps a record of all scores and tests. This application is described by some users as addictive, because they feel the need to come back and better their best score. Sounds are applied to offer encouragement, and at each rank there is a different picture presented on the high score window to inspire curiosity about what it must be like to reach the next level. Hall (1989) supports the idea of playing to a student’s interest as a means of maintaining attention. To this end, Stretch carries an extensive range of literature, in many subjects and, in the event that nothing satisfactory is present, the student can always import the text of her or his choice.
In addition to the tried and true flash-card method employed by Stretch, there is an all-new scrolling flash method that consecutively flashes word groups in more than one line of text. Similar to “Gliding text”, this activity helps exercise vertical, rather than horizontal reading. Krischer et. Al. (1994), have documented the effectiveness of “Gliding Text” in the remediation of static gaze. This is a good alternative exercise if the student has reached an impasse, and finds that the standard flashing word groups do not improve her or his reading skills any further.
Stretch presents a wide variety of methods and features that are known to be successful in the improvement of reading speed and comprehension. Combined with an extensive range of source texts and a wide range of standards, Stretch offers a treasure trove of forty trillion exercises from which, reading activities can be randomly selected. Other features such as consecutively flashing word groups for memory exercise, and pre-flash shadow to assist some readers to attenuate over the correct space, etc. are yet to be reviewed. Few if any other speed reading programs demonstrate the same proportion and extent of conformity to empirical findings. How far students and users “Stretch” their reading skills with this application, remains to be seen…
As this article shows, Stretch only uses exercises recommended by peer-reviewed academic research. Stretch is the only speed reading training software on the market that ignores the commercial hype and is built exclusively on peer reviewed techniques. Aside from being very good value at only US$60.00, Stretch is also the best speed reading trainer on the market because only Stretch is constrained exclusively to techniques tried and proven in empirical research.
