Speaking is the skill you cannot practise by reading about it, and the one most self-taught learners never start. The studio at /speaking gives you something to talk to that answers back, corrects you, and does not get bored — which removes the two real obstacles: no partner, and embarrassment.
Without a plan: A monthly AI credit allowance
Pro adds: A much larger monthly allowance, and speaking drills with your pitch drawn
Talking to Jason
Type, speak, or share an image to start. The tutor holds a conversation at your level, keeps it going when you stall, and corrects without stopping the conversation dead every time you slip.
Each answer from Jason costs 5 credits, so a twenty-message conversation is 100. A roleplay reply costs 5 as well, and marking your side of the conversation is free.
The pronunciation trainer
/speaking/pronunciation is different from conversation. You listen to a native recording, record yourself, and see character by character which ones the recogniser caught. In the levelled lessons on /speaking, your pitch is drawn over the model voice's as well.
It does not grade your tones. The drawing lets you compare them yourself: if the model's third tone in 你好 dips and yours only falls, you will see it. It runs in your browser and costs no credits.
Discussions
/speaking/discussions is the free-form space — a topic rather than an exercise. Use it when you want to talk about something instead of practising a structure.
What it costs
- A message to the tutor — 5 credits — Per answer, here and when you ask him on dictionary, grammar and culture pages.
- A roleplay reply — 5 credits — Per reply. Marking your side of the conversation is free.
- Transcribing what you said — 5 credits — Turning your recording into text so it can be responded to.
- The pronunciation trainer — free — Runs in your browser: characters recognised, pitch drawn in the levelled lessons.
- A spoken reply — by length — When the tutor answers out loud, the narration bills per character rather than at a flat rate, and never less than 5 credits.
A Pro plan grants 1,500 credits a month, which is 300 answers from Jason, and Pro Plus 12,000. Studying earns more, up to 100 a month. The full list is in what each AI feature costs.
Getting value out of a session
- Pick a topic before you start — Open-ended conversation with no subject stalls in three turns. "Order food in a restaurant" does not.
- Say it out loud even when typing — Reading your own sentence aloud before sending recruits your mouth, which is the muscle you are here for.
- Let small mistakes go — Stopping to fix every particle turns a conversation into an exercise. Fluency and accuracy are trained separately.
- Take one thing to the pronunciation trainer — A phrase you fumbled. It is free, and seeing which characters came through beats another twenty turns of conversation for that specific problem.
Common questions
For the pronunciation trainer, yes — it has to hear you. Conversation works typed, so you can use the tutor on a machine with no mic or in a room where you cannot talk.