About Oku

Oku is a free reading-practice app for children learning to read English. It listens as a child reads aloud, helps only on the words that need it, and writes next week's stories around the words the child found hard. Baris Kocdur, a parent in Dubai, builds and runs it as a small family project.

Last updated 3 November 2026

Why Oku exists

Reading aloud every day is one of the best ways for a child to learn to read, and it works best when someone listens to every word. Parents can't always do that, especially when English isn't the language spoken at home. Oku started as a nightly reading helper for one family and is now open to other families in a free beta.

How Oku works

  1. Your child reads a short story aloud, about 10 minutes a night.
  2. Speech recognition (Microsoft Azure Speech) follows every word and checks the pronunciation as your child reads.
  3. When a word is hard, Oku helps with that word only, then lets the story carry on.
  4. Each week, Oku uses AI (Anthropic's Claude) to write new stories around the words and sounds your child found hard.
  5. You see a private reading log. Your child sees no scores and no red marks.

What Oku is not

  • Not a test. Pronunciation scores are estimates that guide the practice. They aren't an educational or medical assessment.
  • Not a replacement for a teacher. If you're worried about your child's reading, talk to their teacher.
  • Not an ad business. Oku shows no ads and doesn't sell data. Read how Oku keeps children safe.

Who builds Oku

Oku is built by Baris Kocdur, a parent based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Baris is responsible for everything on this site, including the guides for parents. Questions, ideas or problems: bkocdur@gmail.com.

Languages

The pages for parents are in English, Turkish, Arabic and Polish. The reading itself is always in English, because that's the language your child is practising.