What's New

EssayHero started as a writing feedback tool. But students preparing for HKDSE or IELTS don't just write — they speak.

Paper 4 and the IELTS Speaking test are worth real marks, and most students get very little structured practice outside the classroom.

Speaking Practice for Two Major Exams

So we built a speaking section. It covers:

• HKDSE Paper 4 Part B — Individual Response
• IELTS Speaking Parts 1, 2, and 3 — Full test format

You can find it at /speaking.

How It Works

The flow has two phases, and the separation is deliberate.

Phase 1: See Your Words

First, you record yourself responding to a prompt. When you stop, you get a transcript — your actual words, laid out on screen.

This step matters on its own. Most students have never seen what they sound like written down. It's often surprising.

You notice the fillers, the half-finished thoughts, the sentences that go nowhere. That awareness is valuable before any AI gets involved.

Phase 2: AI Analysis

Second, the AI analyses the transcript. It gives you feedback on:

• Vocabulary range — variety and sophistication of word choice
• Grammatical accuracy — correctness and complexity of structures
• Idea development — depth and coherence of your response
• Fluency — smoothness and natural flow of speech

Each area gets a separate assessment, so you can see specifically where to focus.

What We Don't Assess (and Why)

Here's the honest part. We cannot reliably assess pronunciation, intonation, stress patterns, or body language from a transcript.

And we don't pretend to.

How Speech-to-Text Works

Speech-to-text systems convert your audio into words. Once that conversion happens, the acoustic information — how you said something — is gone.

What remains is what you said.

What Pronunciation Assessment Requires

Assessing pronunciation properly requires either:

• A human listener, or
• Specialised acoustic models built specifically for that purpose

A language model reading a transcript is not that.

A Design Choice, Not a Missing Feature

So we score what we can assess reliably (vocabulary, grammar, ideas, fluency patterns) and we're transparent about the rest.

This is a design choice, not a missing feature.

Fluency You Can Measure

Even without pronunciation scoring, there's a lot of useful data in how you speak.

Quantitative Fluency Metrics

The speaking section gives you:

• Words per minute — overall speaking rate
• Pause frequency — how often you stop mid-flow
• Average pause length — duration of hesitations
• Filler word count — "um", "like", "you know", etc.

Real Measurements, Not AI Judgement

These numbers are derived directly from your recording. They don't involve AI judgement — they're measurements.

If you're speaking at 90 words per minute with frequent pauses and a lot of "um" and "like", that tells you something concrete to work on.

66 Prompts, No Repeats

We've built a bank of 66 speaking prompts across all supported formats:

• HKDSE Individual Response prompts
• IELTS Part 1 topics
• IELTS Part 2 cue cards (with the visual layout you'll see in the real exam)
• IELTS Part 3 discussion questions

Systematic Practice Without Repetition

The prompts are served without repeats, so you can work through them systematically.

If you're doing a prompt a day in the weeks before your exam, that's over two months of practice.

Read-Aloud and Voice Dictation

Two smaller features worth mentioning.

Read-Aloud Fluency Checker

The read-aloud fluency checker lets you paste in a text, read it aloud, and compare your spoken version against the original.

It highlights where you diverged — skipped words, substitutions, additions.

This is useful for:

• Building reading fluency
• Catching patterns in how you process written English aloud
• Identifying words that trip you up

Voice Dictation on Essay Form

Voice dictation is now available on the main essay form. You can brainstorm by speaking instead of typing.

Some students find it easier to get ideas flowing out loud, then edit the transcript into a proper essay. It's there if you want it.

Same Philosophy, New Format

If you've used EssayHero for writing, the approach will feel familiar.

Our Approach to Feedback

We give you the most useful feedback we can, we tell you what we can't do, and we let you decide how to use the information.

• No inflated scores — honest assessment based on official criteria
• No vague encouragement — specific, actionable feedback
• Just honest assessment — of the things we can measure well

Feedback or questions? Email hello@essayhero.app.