--- title: "China's AI speaking coach teams up with the IELTS body to fix the country's weakest skill" date: 2026-10-31 category: AI in Action site: NeuroAI canonical: https://neuroai.site/a/na-app-hiecho-oral-english language: en --- # China's AI speaking coach teams up with the IELTS body to fix the country's weakest skill > NetEase Youdao's Hi Echo virtual-human tutor, built on the Ziyue education large model, has drawn close to a million users and an official IELTS partnership. A student in a small apartment mutters a sentence into a phone, then waits for a smiling avatar to reply. No classroom, no human tutor, no fear of being judged — just a private, endless conversation in English. For hundreds of millions of Chinese learners, speaking has always been the wall. Reading and writing can be drilled from books; speaking needs a partner who is patient, available, and never impatient. An AI virtual human (虚拟人) is quietly becoming that partner. ## Key takeaways - NetEase Youdao (网易有道) launched Hi Echo in October 2023 as the world's first virtual-human oral-English tutor, running on its Ziyue (子曰) education large model (大模型). - Speaking is statistically China's weakest IELTS skill: the 2023 mainland average was 5.6, below listening (6.1), reading (6.4) and writing (5.8). - Hi Echo partnered with the British Council, the IELTS examining body, in early 2024 to embed official-style mock speaking tests and scoring. - Reported users grew from close to one million in early 2024 to a million-scale audience by 2025, and the app was featured on Apple's App Store homepage. - The model now grades pronunciation and grammar, offers phoneme-level correction, and spans five proficiency stages and dozens of scenarios. ## Why speaking is the hard part China produces strong test-takers in reading and listening, but spoken English lags. According to the 2023 Global IELTS Data Report cited by local media, mainland candidates scored an average of 5.6 in speaking — the lowest of the four skills, behind listening at 6.1, reading at 6.4 and writing at 5.8. The gap is not talent; it is practice. A real conversation partner costs money and scheduling, and most learners simply never get enough repetitions to feel fluent. Hi Echo attacks exactly that bottleneck. Instead of another grammar quiz, it opens a live dialogue with a lifelike avatar that listens, replies, and keeps the talk going on any topic the user picks — from ordering coffee to a mock job interview. ## How the virtual human works Under the hood is the Ziyue (子曰) education large model (大模型), which NetEase Youdao unveiled in July 2023 as China's first education-focused model. Hi Echo was its earliest consumer application. The system does three things a human coach would: it keeps a natural conversation, it scores the learner, and it tells them precisely what to fix. After each exchange the app returns a report grading pronunciation and grammar, then offers polished alternative phrasings and even phoneme-level guidance on individual sounds. Learners can choose from five stages — primary school through the workplace — and three difficulty levels, across roughly ten themes and nearly ninety sub-scenarios. A child mode uses simpler dialogue and a friendly companion avatar to get young learners talking. In 2025 the product added a voice-version of DeepSeek-R1, merging that model's reasoning with Ziyue's teaching scaffolding, so the conversation can wander into open-ended, less scripted territory. ## From a niche app to an Apple feature The growth curve is the part global readers should note. Reporting from early 2024 put registered users close to one million; by 2025 the company described the audience as million-scale. Apple's App Store later featured Hi Echo on its homepage "Today" AI-apps collection — the third time the store highlighted it, and the only education-category app in that round, sitting alongside DeepSeek and Doubao. The IELTS partnership is the credibility anchor. In early 2024 NetEase Youdao struck a deal with the British Council (英国文化教育协会), the organisation that runs the IELTS exam. Inside Hi Echo, learners get an official-style speaking mock, a live question bank, and a report scored against the exam's own rubric across fluency, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Educators at several Chinese schools and universities have pointed students to it as a low-cost practice tool. ## What it means beyond China Hi Echo is a useful lens on a broader shift: Chinese consumer apps are no longer just adopting large models (大模型) for chat or image generation, but embedding them in daily, paid-for routines. A speaking coach that is always available, never tired, and far cheaper than a human tutor is exactly the kind of "AI in practice" deployment that scales fastest because the demand is universal. For learners outside China, the same template — a patient avatar that scores and corrects — is now being cloned for other languages and exams. The interesting question is not whether the technology works for drill-and-practice, but whether it can teach the cultural and situational nuance that a human teacher supplies. ## Honest limitations This article relies on company statements, Chinese state-media coverage, and the British Council partnership announcement; independent, peer-reviewed studies on Hi Echo's learning outcomes are limited. User counts are reported by the company and its partners rather than audited externally. The IELTS score comparison comes from a 2023 industry report, not a controlled trial of the app. Accent and pronunciation scoring reflects one model's notion of "standard" English and may not match every learner's goals. I have not tested the app myself, and pricing or feature details change frequently. ## What readers can do now - If you are preparing for IELTS or another spoken exam, try a free tier of an AI speaking coach for daily five-minute reps, but verify corrections against an official rubric rather than trusting the score blindly. - Parents of young learners can use child-mode avatars as a low-pressure warm-up, then pair them with a human teacher for feedback the AI cannot give. - Watch the "education large model (大模型)" category: similar virtual tutors are appearing for other languages, and comparing two before paying is worth the ten minutes. --- Published by NeuroAI (https://neuroai.site/) — https://neuroai.site/a/na-app-hiecho-oral-english Free to quote with attribution and a link to the original.