Speak & Read

YEAR: 1980
ITEM: Childrens' Comp./Game
COMPANY: Texas Instruments
COUNTRY: USA
IN OUR COLLECTION: Yes

Speak & Read is an electronic learning aid made in 1980, by Texas Instruments. This device was part of a family of learning toys like "Speak & Math" and "Speak & Spell". Speak & Read was designed to help children ages 4 to 8 develop and improve on their reading comprehension and vocabulary use. It also came with a booklet that was meant to be used with the skill activity modes in the unit. This learning toy had a vocabulary of 250 words programmed into it.

The display screen was a vacuum fluorescent (VFD). Speak & Read units used a membrane keyboard for input. The single chip voice synthesizer, the TI TMC0280 was the same one Texas Instruments used in the "Speak & Spell". The games that were included with Speak & Read are Word Zap, Word Maker, Read it, Picture Read, Letter Stumper and Hear It.

There are also 8 different known Speak & Read Cartridge Libraries that could be put into the device. Sea Sights consisted of compound words such as seafood, shipmate and sunburn. Who's at the Zoo focused on contractions and verbs ending in ed, es, s and er. A Dog on a Log was to teach kids rhyming words and plural endings. The Seal that Could Fly was to teach sound-alike vowel combinations such as ay, ai, ea and ee. A Ghost in the House helped kids with word prefixes. On the Track was meant to teach children consonant blends. The Third Circle was for R-controlled vowels like ir, ar, er. Lastly, The Millionth Knight taught silent letter combinations such as chalk, phone and limb.

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