Word Echo was born out of my work in education, watching young learners struggle with early reading skills made me want to build something that actually helped. I wanted a tool that felt low-pressure and encouraging for kids, especially English language learners who are still finding their voice in a new language. As someone who speaks English as a second language myself, I understood firsthand how accent and pronunciation anxiety can get in the way of learning, so I built ESL mode specifically with that empathy in mind.

I built Word Echo solo using React, and used it as my first real project with Kiro. The biggest technical challenge was the voice recognition, getting the Speech API to accurately interpret young readers and non-native speakers with accents is genuinely hard, and tuning the matching logic to be forgiving without being meaningless took real iteration. The result is an app that works offline, requires no login, and puts the focus entirely on the learner, because that’s what the classroom actually needs.