Ready, set, go! Using CoachBot: the language taskmaster

I've been in Amman for a few months now, and my colloquial Arabic skills are still a sore point. I now find myself speaking an odd mix of fusha and colloquial, and I'm hoping that over the next few months I can practice more and switch over, and not ask questions like (true story) "Keef keep up?"

I'm excited about working on Arabic in different ways: I'm going to be doing some work on 'Master Arabic' - Alex Strick van Linschoten's upcoming (available for pre-order now!) hugely useful new book for intermediate Arabic students to get over the roadblocks in learning and advancing in the language. 

Alex has also developed a fantastic new tool for language study called CoachBot which I'm really looking forward to using as I practice Arabic (and hopefully get back to resuming my Farsi study this year.)

So CoachBot works like a task master: you pick how much time you have -- the five minutes before you're waiting for your ride, the 15 minutes off your lunch break -- and go:

I picked five minutes

My very glamorous to-do list

All of this took less than five minutes. Fantastic! There are over 380 tasks online, and more are being added every day. So the next time you're complaining about how you just can't make the time to study, remember it only takes five minutes to get back into it.