The STAR system is a prototype speech assessment and training tool that uses an animated Star character to interact with and encourage children in speech learning and production tasks. These tasks are incorporated into different games. The STAR character acts as a guide and motivator throughout these games. The system, when completed and functioning, will start with basic phoneme recognition tasks, and progress through phoneme production tasks, first in isolation, then in simple and eventually more complex phonetic contexts, and finally in sentences.