A phonics training system adapted to teach a pre-school child having a limited vocabulary of words which identify various objects, such as people, animals and things, how each of these words is spelled, thereby making it possible for the child to read these words. The system includes a computer having a video output terminal and a memory in which is digitally stored an electronic dictionary containing the phonetic sounds of the words in the vocabulary and the alphabetic spelling of each of these words. Associated with the computer is image software containing a library of images which illustrate the various objects represented by the words in the phonetics dictionary. The computer is provided with a peripheral in the form of a voice recognition unit into which the child speaks, the unit acting to recognize the distinctive sound pattern of the child's voice and to accommodate the phonetics dictionary to this pattern.