Changing the speed for a spelling drill affects how long the student has to answer a question before the "Too slow..." message is displayed. Note that the student is only ever competing against his or her own best time for each individual spelling word, so students are not up against an arbitrary standard which is just too difficult. Dr. Aardsma's Drills keeps track of the student's best time for each word and gives the student a margin of extra time beyond their best time to complete the word when asked it again. The spelling drill speed option affects this margin of extra time.

The spelling drills default to "fast" speed at the time of registration. This is the appropriate level for normal students. Differences in student ability at different grade levels is already figured in to the drill's definition of "fast". That is, "fast" is much slower for Spelling 1 than it is for Spelling 8, for example.

Response time is included in the spelling drills mainly to train the student's ability to concentrate on the task at hand. If you wish to reduce this aspect of the drill, because of the special needs of the student, for example, or to focus more on just correct spelling, choose a slower speed from the table below.