Hi, I wondered if anyone is using Chicky Tutor to practice speaking? It’s far from perfect, but it does help me to practice speaking without getting blackouts in real life situations 
What I like it that only after a couple of weeks of using it I notice I can speak much faster, what I don’t like is that it’s a bit vague which grammar points the AI discusses. There doesn’t seem to be any real structure there.
Edit: I googled this and the first thing that came up was one of the variants for how they come up on search
I quote in all its glory the nonsensical, ungrammatical and incredibly sloppy:
It’s like Duolingo, but for language-learning!.
I was having a terrible day and that banger really got me.
Anyway, I really overreacted, here’s my -
I’m sorry if I offend you and this is not the case, but this looks like one of those posts where a dev posts looking like a user posting something critical about their product, and then they get a lot of angry pitchfork responses (expected) which is great because they just a) got more visibility and b) a list of things people hate about their product image that they can go cosmetically fix.
Therefore, I’m not going to write a list of simple things that make it extremely obvious to me after spending about 5 seconds looking this up, that it is a pile of trash built by lazy creators who don’t care one iota about quality. If you don’t have those skills and you’re curious, and you know me, then you will know where you can PM me to find out what I based that opinion on.
I’m not working for free giving ‘user feedback’ for creators who have used AI for their entire nonsensical product. I think it’s best if someone from the community points this out so everyone else can just ignore the post and it drops down into obscurity where it belongs.
People here may or may not agree that there are thoughtful ways to use AI to enhance something a human can do and arrive at something that was not previously possible or feasible. But I think most people will agree - this is not it.
And to OP, I’m sorry if I offended you and you genuinely wanted to #chat about this product. If there doesn’t seem to be any structure in the grammar presentation on this thing, that’s because there isn’t. It’s literally making up each interaction with you on the spot and teaching you to speak like a robot. Good grief, haven’t you come across posts where you know that the person copied the text from ChatGPT? Do you really want to speak Japanese like that? 
Search the forum, there are many other options available to you
Eh.. if you look at my posting history, you can see that I am active here for years. Lvl 60, lifetime subscription and all that. So no, I am not the dev disguising as a new user.
You did not offend me at all, no worries. I find your conspiracy theory rather amusing.
If anyone wants to discuss their experience with this app with me, please do.
I am interested in a free app where I can practice speaking in addition to italki. I typed it in google and saw “it’s like Duolingo but for language learning.” This is strange to me as Duolingo is for learnings languages too. So my questions are:
Is it a free app, not just signing up for free but are there pay walls I should know about?
What sets it apart from Duolingo?
Do you come up with the topics yourself or can it do that for you?
How do you find the interactions? Stilted and robotic or pretty good for an AI?
Thanks for your responses.
I am Nic Cage disguising myself as the developer of a chatbot app.
Step 1: create a decades-long plan to fool mitrac
Step 2: win an Academy Award for Leaving Las Vegas
Step 3: get nominated for Adaptation
Step 4: join WaniKani and reach level 60
Step 5: reset to level 1, climb up the levels again
Step 6: become a lazy creator who doesn’t care one iota about quality
Step 7: create a website that is literally making up each interaction with you on the spot
Step 8: disguise self as Warrie asking for angry pitchfork responses from WK members
Step 9: steal the Declaration of Independence
Step 10: profit?!?!
I was in Japan last November. I did my best talking as much as possible, but especially in crowded environments my brain just stopped working and I had trouble saying even some of the most basic things I never really focussed on talking. I started learning Japanese mostly because I wanted to read Japanese books and visual novels. But in Japan I learned that I really need to practice talking a lot more.
There are apps like Italki, but I found paying for those lessons pretty expensive. In Japan I read some positive things about that Chicky app. If I can remember correctly it’s free but very limited how much you can use it per day. At that moment there was a BF sale for it so I took a yearly subscription without testing the app a lot.
I’m probably the only one who never used DuoLingo so I can’t compare it with that 
The idea of the app is that you select your level, the AI comes up with the topics, remembers how well you are doing on certain grammar points and decided if some topics need to be repeated.
There is a progress overview, in which you can see a report of what was discussed, how it went and what the AI will discuss in the next lesson.
It’s absolutely terrible if you want to learn pronounciation, AI doesn’t work for that, but I find it superhelpfull that it first asks to say a short sentence, then builds it up to a bigger sentence with more grammar. Now I don’t have the real life stress of a busy shop with people waiting behind me and I can just take the time to think first about how the sentence should be.
I use it for a month or so now and notice that I don’t have to think as much anymore before I can say a longer sentence, so that’s great.
But - the app is superbeta, with lots of issues. That progress I was talking about doesn’t work in practice, It very often repeats the same questions over and over again. You can at any time change the subject and grammar point, but in my experience the whole progress system doesn’t work at all.
What I do is pick a grammar point from Bunpro which I’m struggling with, then keep practicing sentences with that.
The AI itself is pretty good, I’m not sure which engine it’s using. But - also here many issues. Sometimes I give the correct answer, it says it’s wrong, then gives me the exact same answer. It’s not a speech recognistion issue, it does the same answer when I type an answer. Also often the AI just stops talking halfway.
The dev isn’t responsive - I mailed my issues almost 2 months ago, didn’t get a reply. There is a forum on Chicky where people post the same issues but almost no activity there from the dev.
In short, despite all the issues I keep using it because simply practicing speaking helps me a lot. I have a Japanese friend on HelloTalk and until 2 months ago we only chatted, but now we start to talk more and more, mostly because I’m now more confident with talking.
Would I recommend paying for it - absolutely not, it’s a broken mess.
What I was curious about if others here are using it and maybe found a better way of using it, encounter the same issues or figured out ways to bypass those issues. Or maybe know of a better alternative to practice speaking solo.
I can neither confirm nor deny that I am Nicolas Cage, currently method-acting as a random WaniKani user who is interested in Chicky Tutor experiences.
Please forget everything you read here.
Especially steps 4–5.
Those were… painful.
Anyway, I have a Declaration of Independence to steal.
I’m really sorry, that was the snarkiest thing I’ve written or said in years. I had a terrible day yesterday and I shouldn’t have written all that. Please accept my apologies
Thank you for saying that, I appreciate it.
No hard feelings at all, and I hope today is treating you better.
Forums can be a bit of a pressure cooker sometimes.
Thank you, for understanding and your nice wishes.
Not so much the forum as pressure cooker, but irl issues and events. Take care 
About your edited reply - yes, that Duolingo ‘slogan’ is absolute cringe. I also hate the name ‘Chicky’.
I assume, after looking him up on linkedin, that the dev is not a native English speaker (neither am I).
Normally that would already turn me off - but I saw a post on reddit from someone mentioning the apps he/she is using. Most were the same as I use. WK, Bunpro, Migaku, stuff like that. The only one he mentioned that I didn’t know was Chicky Tutor, that is how I started to give it a try.
Despite all the issues it has, what I like is that it gives me sentences which then make me think how I would say that, then corrects me. Not the pronounciation, AI is terrible for that, but at least the correct word order and grammar. But I did not want this post to end up in a pro/con AI discussion, that’s already been discussed enough
The times I was in Japan I could speak short sencences, but anything more complicated than that resulted in an instant brainfreeze. So for me it helps, but if there is a better alternative to practice solo, I would love to hear those suggestions
interesting context, and I see what you’re getting at. I can identify with the brain freeze so much
When I think of how my own speaking has developed (which to be fair is still basic, so take this with a grain of salt) and how I’ve gotten better at spontaneously being able to choose words I know to keep a more complex thought going - I think the most effective methods ‘forced’ me to respond, if that makes sense. The effect of being asked a question and expecting a response is very different for the brain than, e.g:
a) thinking ages and then saying something out loud to myself
b) shadowing something I hear
c) translation request (though perhaps the best of the 3 for what you’re aiming for)
Those are helpful and common suggestions, but they don’t get to the problem of this blanking out that you talked about. It’s definitely a skill on its own in each language that I’ve learned - how to access my knowledge on demand with a bit of performance pressure.
AI can prompt and demand performance pressure, and we may even aspire to speak half as well as an AI bot. But it makes so many mistakes in Japanese parsing, word choice, readings, and context-related choices, learning and getting reinforcement from it risks our brain firmly identifying that practice as effective communication (because if it’s speaking to us and we’re responding, we’re lighting up our language centres, not our ‘I’m memorising vocab’ nodes). It will be very hard to overwrite later. I can tell you from bitter experience with learning German quickly to a level that got a lot of praise, but had fundamental inaccuracies (not with AI, but I purposefully/naively ignored some things). It’s a herculean task to get them out of my head now. I could have learned fractionally slower to not systematically reinforce certain mistakes and now be free of that issue.
Anyway, I’ll just list some ideas here that actually make you practice the performance pressure side of things solo. In my experience for best results, whatever you choose should get as close to Japanese prompt → Japanese response as possible, or from a spontaneous thought → expression in Japanese.
It reminds me of the framework for language learning that Paul Nation proposes (what you need to know to learn a foreign language), maybe there are ideas in there for you. Although all of his speaking/writing tips might give you ideas, have a look at his tips for fluent speaking and fluent writing. It’s probably best for preparing for predictable situations, though.
These things aren’t solo, but worth mentioning just in case something is feasible and it sparks some ideas you hadn’t considered -
The University of Hawaii (if that’s at all in an accessible time zone for you) does language classes that have substantial speaking practice at the end. Or look for a Japan/[your country/nearest big city] society. I do a weekly online language class that emphasises speaking and it’s great. These kinds of things are really nice because there is just sooo much to learn about Japanese culture. Corrections normally come with a fascinating cultural insight as to why it’s said that way (by me, in that context, and why it’s different than what I read in a book with someone else speaking at a different politeness level/context). Experimenting is worth it. I did a more expensive one out of London for a while that was pretty boring and unhelpful. My current one is pretty inexpensive but I think it’s so good because the group used to meet in person and they are all there for love of culture, so there’s a lot of heart in it.
Higher bar to arrange, but nothing beats a native speaker, because you’ve got the real time interaction and contextual feedback. The stakes are high and your brain will fully freeze as you already know, but it’s also so highly engaged you’ll have great retention and skill gets better every time. The downside is searching for someone, and embarrassing yourself a few times before settling in. There are some discords where people meet up and chat, and although it does take a time to meet someone that has a similar interest and commitment, it’s game changing. I’ve been speaking to someone weekly for an hour (30 min English/30 min Japanese) since 2018. It’s not a huge amount, but on the other hand, it has added up to a basic level of conversational fluency and a fantastic friendship. I wish I could recommend where we met but it was an old free service that italki since abandoned. But I know I have come across links to EN/JP discords where people have met others, and that could be an option. Perhaps you’ll find some links here or on reddit. Depending on your native language, there may be demand for a language exchange.
A paid tutor is an option, but I’m assuming you’ve already considered / eliminated that for your own reasons.
Thanks for the lovely reply. Bit busy at work atm so a quick short reply for now.
I totally get the AI Zone part and I don’t take AI answers for granted. Even in my own language it makes mistakes. I see/use it more as an unreliable tutor - it shows me a sentence and forces me to quickly think how to say it. When I have any doubts about the correct answer, I’m fortunate enough to have a native Japanese friend on HelloTalk who (hopefully) does give me the correct answer.
I tried Pimsleur a while ago and it wasn’t really for me. SO boring The level was really low and it kept asking the same basic questions endlessly. I get their method - it’s just not for me.
What I like about using AI is that I can pick a grammar point I’m struggling with to use quickly in real life (hello, 30 ways of saying しなければならない) and just let AI give me sentence after sentence using that structure. I (and my Japanese friend ) really notice my speech has improved a lot since doing this. Mostly because I went from not speaking at all to practicing this an hour per day. It makes me more confident and less shy to talk to my friend.
Italki - Probably the best method, but I found the prices too steep and often the timezones are a bit of an issue. But more importantly - back then when I was checking it out, I was not confident enough to even dare to try it.
When I’m done with work I will check the resources you mention!
I think I will keep using Chicky or Chatgpt for a while more, just to force myself to keep practicing every day, then have more and more audio contact on HelloTalk with that Japanese friend. I did ask her to talk a bit slower because when she starts to rattle - I doubt if even natives can understand her
(How was your day?)
