Aika May Talavera, right, and Shashwa Aditya developed Kigaru Talks, a smartphone app that uses artificial intelligence to help people gain confidence speaking Japanese. (Aika May Talavera)
A former Defense Department school student in Japan has developed a smartphone app that uses artificial intelligence to help people gain confidence speaking Japanese.
Aika May Talavera, co-founder of Kigaru Talks, graduated in 2017 from Ernest J. King Middle High School at Sasebo Naval Base. She said the idea for the app came after tutoring more than 100 military-affiliated students and noticing that many were grasping Japanese language concepts but lacked opportunities to practice speaking.
“I wanted to go beyond what I could do in one-on-one lessons,” Talavera told Stars and Stripes in a Sept. 16 email. “I wanted to build something bigger, something scalable, accessible, and designed with our community in mind.”
Kigaru Talks, which became available for download this month, provides what Talavera called a “safe, pressure-free space for learners to practice speaking Japanese, make mistakes and build confidence.”
“Kigaru, it means lighthearted,” she said in a follow-up video call from Vietnam. “So, I wanted to offer this place where they could feel lighthearted enough to practice Japanese and not have any fears of making mistakes.”
Kigaru Talks, developed by a former Department of Defense Education Activity sudent, is a smartphone app that uses artificial intelligence to help people gain confidence speaking Japanese. (Kigaru Talks)
To create the app, Talavera partnered with Shashwa Aditya, whom she met in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Aditya, co-founder and chief AI officer of Kigaru Talks, oversees the technology behind the platform. He grew up in India, is fluent in Hindi and English and graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology.
“We use multiple AI tools here,” he said on a Sept. 18 video call. “The idea with Kigaru is that it’s not a tutor that teaches you things. It’s a companion that helps you — gives you a non-judgmental environment so that you can speak, because a lot of people are shy when it comes to practicing speaking, right?”
The app’s levels are based on the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test, Talavera said. At the end of each conversation, it generates flashcards that show what the learner said, the intended meaning and an explanation of errors.
Aditya said users’ personal information is kept separate from the app’s teaching features.
“Any analysis that we do is used for the user itself. So, it’s isolated in that sense, where whenever you have a conversation, your conversation gets analyzed and used only for your purpose,” he said.
Talavera, who grew up speaking Japanese, English and Tagalog, said she did not realize until later in life how difficult it can be for others to build confidence in speaking a new language.
“So, I would say even at a very young age, I kind of already knew how to switch those languages in my head without having so much difficulty with it,” she said.
Kigaru Talks is available free from the App Store and Google Play. A premium version costs $14.99 per month or $89 per year.
AloJapan.com