Gen Z makes free L/N lisp correction software for teachers and students in Hung Yen

(Dan Tri) - The boy born in 2002 created a free L/N pronunciation practice tool for more than 300 teachers and 12,000 students in Hung Yen to use.

The young man Nguyen Tuan Hiep (born 2002) from Hoang Hoa Tham commune, Hung Yen, started technology startup projects early in his first years of university. One of the outstanding products of this Gen Z guy is the L/N pronunciation training software that has been used by more than 300 teachers to teach more than 11,000 students in Hung Yen province.

Set your own math problem

Hiep was born and raised in a family with a mother and many relatives who are teachers. Therefore, when the locality launched and implemented a movement to overcome the problem of incorrect pronunciation of the first two consonants L and N, he quickly paid attention to this problem and saw in it an opportunity to apply his technological knowledge.

"After the training sessions to correct pronunciation errors, the teachers expressed their desire to have a solution to cure L/N lisp for students. I consider this a topic for computer engineering students like me," Hiep excitedly recounted.

After listening to his mother's professional advice, Hiep immediately thought of a model similar to popular foreign language pronunciation and vocabulary training software. However, when envisioning users as teachers and students, he realized the product needed to be designed to be flexible, able to operate on many devices and be compatible with different operating systems, without the need for complicated installation. Therefore, Hiep chose to develop his product in the form of a web app.

From the beginning, Hiep determined that his product did not need too many complicated features. Instead of building a software with account registration, login, advertising..., he chose a minimalist approach: the entire usage process is contained in just a single page.

According to Hiep, this is a one-page application, much simpler than systems with many layers of functionality. Users just need to open the tool, read the words according to the instructions, then receive the pronunciation assessment results. This design helps teachers and students to access quickly, without wasting time getting used to too many operations and to use more flexibly.

"I started working at about 8:00 a.m., sketching the interface first and then using AI to help create the design code. Building the interface did not take much time, but choosing and fine-tuning the voice recognition model was much more complicated," Hiep recounted.

Hiep uses the open source voice recognition model Whisper. He chose a version that is light enough to be able to operate on many models, and at the same time tweaked it to be more friendly to Vietnamese, especially sensitive to the difference between the first two consonants L and N to practice and practice standard pronunciation.

Hiep said, in just a short time - about a day of closing "cultivation" - the first version of the software was completed. He gave the product to family members to try first.

"When I gave it to my mother to use, my mother answered all the questions correctly. As for my father, he got 4/10 questions wrong," Hiep happily told the story, "Thanks to relatives introducing and connecting, I sent the product for other teachers to experience. The product was completed right before the Lunar New Year of the Horse, I consider this a Tet gift for the teachers."

Potential "Startup" but does not set business goals

Hiep deployed his product as a startup. Instead of introducing it widely from the beginning, he started sending the product to a small group of teachers he knew first.

"On the first evening of opening registration, there were dozens of teachers filling out information and teachers continuously forwarded it to each other. I see this clearly reflects the need to use tools to support L/N pronunciation practice," Hiep said.

Hiep sent teachers a short video describing how to use the software, along with a registration form that included questions: how many students are the teachers teaching; What phone or computer do you usually use, what operating system; What is the usage experience like; contact information…

From the registered phone number, Hiep invited teachers to a Zalo group. He sends instructions for use, receives feedback and supports each error that arises, just like how a startup takes care of users in the early stages of launching a product.

One time, Hiep received feedback when a teacher encountered an error because the computer did not have a Vietnamese language package installed, causing the application to not correctly recognize the L/N pronunciation. Immediately after that, he added an error reporting mechanism and instructed users to download the necessary Vietnamese package to their computer; Another time, when a few other teachers reported that the interface on the tablet had hidden operation buttons, Hiep immediately checked on the real device, confirmed the error and corrected it in the next versions.

Up to now, the product of the boy born in 2002 has been registered by more than 300 teachers, and is used in practicing correct pronunciation for more than 12,000 Hung Yen students. According to a joint survey by Hiep and an inter-level school in the area, the rate of both reading and writing problems has decreased from 27% to less than 5%.

Although the L/N lisp treatment software received a lot of positive feedback and had the potential to become a commercial project, Hiep still decided not to further expand the project in a business direction.

"In the coming time, I still want to continue developing my project but in the direction of serving educational research or technology support for similar projects. If there is a need for software to practice lisping question marks/tildes, I am still ready to do it," Hiep happily said.

Student received 90% of VinUni scholarship, twice asked to reserve study results

In the last days of grade 12, thanks to his academic achievements, Hiep received a scholarship and became the first student of VinUni's Electrical & Computer Engineering major.

However, at first, his studies were not simple because the foreign language did not keep up with the curriculum. Hiep bravely asked to reserve the results for one semester to improve his knowledge before returning to school.

During this time, Hiep fell in love with startups. He and his friends started with the startup NaviAI - a virtual assistant that supports presentations for students, capable of creating slides, infographics... Then came OpenADAS, an application to support drivers for safe driving.

In the next period, when the startup reached the "go big or go home" stage (the time to devote all efforts to maintaining the startup project), Hiep decided to ask for a reservation again. This time, the instructors put their trust in the guy, as long as he returned to school to continue studying after accumulating enough experience - and Hiep kept his promise.

Sharing about his and his friends' startup orientations, Hiep happily said: "Starting a business is not too risky if you know how to create sustainable value. Everyone aims for a unicorn startup, but if you haven't done it yet, there is always a chance to become a 'unicorn' startup."

Unlike unicorn startups that have great potential and can raise large capital, "salamander" startups need to be persistent to see results. The project's self-sustaining revenue is also a success.

Also while studying at university, Hiep had the opportunity to become an exchange student at Cornell University (USA) to observe and learn about the startup ecosystem in his country. For Hiep, these are memorable memories and become experiences for Hiep to continue implementing his future plans.