Resetting my base line: caffeine edition

I've blogged enthusiastically about tea in the past. I enjoy discovering new varieties and the winter weather in particular makes an ever-ready cuppa almost obligatory.

I've been busy with work projects in the past month or two, so I was surprised to realise how much my caffeine intake has increased, almost imperceptibly. Prior to my intervention, I was drinking perhaps two or three cups of caffeinated tea per day. That may seem like nothing to those of you with a six-coffees-a-day habit, but my body (and mind) is more sensitive than most to caffeine. Three cups per day left me feeling rattled and edgy.

Caffeine, for me, can be good in certain very specific circumstances. It's great when I'm generating ideas -- either for a particular work project or just in general -- but particularly bad when I need to sit down and write (and focus). Caffeine seems to stimulate the randomly associative part of my brain, the one that has me connecting chocolate to fish sentience or making some other strange link.

I've found that when I need to focus, I tend to prefer drinks that are completely caffeine-free. Even my newly-discovered favourite, kukicha or twig tea, comes with a caffeine punch, albeit one that is greatly reduced.

So a few weeks back I instituted a caffeine-only-very-seldom policy. It's working well so far. I feel much better, more focused, less jittery, and when I do choose to drink a cup of chocolate puerh, for example, as I did this morning, one is more than enough. (I've done similar things in the past with salt and sugar and had equally positive experiences.) As always, Beeminder is holding my hand all the way.

Classical Arabic and a Sources and Methods Recap

The new Arabic podcast I started has three episodes out of the Jordanian dialect series. Today I'm adding to those with a new series exploring classical literature. I'm extremely pleased to be joined by my friend, the erudite Talha Ahsan, someone who has a strong appreciation for the subject matter and who teaches Arabic online and in person in the UK. Read some of the testimonials from his former students here.

In our first episode, we discuss Ibn al-Muqafaa' and Talha's interest in classical literature. We get into Ibn al-Muqaffa's relevance to the modern age and explain what we hope this podcast series will do.

Sources and Methods has a new podcast out today, too. This is an 'inbetweenisode' in which Matt and I discuss the past year, what we've been up to recently and some of our future plans. Let us know if you enjoyed this style of episode. We were thinking of doing more of these conversations between us where we take a deep-dive into a particular topic.

How to best work with a language coach

I work to help language students make more effective and efficient progress. Sometimes I work with those who want to learn other skills like coding, or perhaps a more specific productivity issue or project that requires top performance.

But how can you make sure you get the most value out of working with me or another professional coach?

Show Up

Come with questions and a purpose. Coaching works best when student and coach each show up with things to contribute to the discussion. Two important prerequisites on the part of the student are some sense of their goals as well as a set of questions. (If there weren't any questions, there wouldn't be any need for a coach). The more explicit and engaged these questions and purpose can be, the better the coaching will be.

Keep Notes

Ideally you'll keep a notebook where you can gather more specific insights, questions and reactions to the work you're doing. If you don't note them down while you're doing the work, you'll probably forget and miss out on the opportunity to get feedback or suggestions on the particular problem that affected you.

More Feedback, More Communication

As a coach, it's most difficult to help someone when you don't hear much about what they're doing or how they're feeling about it. There probably isn't an upper limit on how much feedback to give. More is better, just so long as it doesn't take you away from your actual language study. This can take the form of a daily email once you've completed your study session for the day, or writing notes in our shared tracking spreadsheet.

Reflect

Reflection brings perspective. By taking a step back from your coaching and your language studies, you might be able to figure out some broader patterns relating to how you study. Reflection can take any form. I like to write out a problem or a situation using pen/paper, thinking through how I feel things are going. Think of it as a solo version of the coaching sessions themselves which have reflection built-in.

Follow-up During The Week

I welcome email queries during the week. Very few take me up on the offer, though it's an excellent time to get quick answers to any particular question or issue that comes up. If the weekly check-in is the only time we hear from each other, course corrections are much harder to make.

Do The Work

If you're working with someone, you're going to get the most benefit if you follow through with whatever you both agree you'll get done in a particular week. Doing the work will bring up new challenges and questions, and these can feed into the ongoing coaching. In order to decide whether a given path is or isn't working for you, you have to give it a serious try in the first place.

Finally, on a more prosaic note, showing up on time and giving adequate notice if you need to reschedule are always practices I really appreciate in someone I'm working with. I often travel from different parts of the town to make sure I'm ready for a call.

Out of all of this, communication is the key.

[Read more about getting language/skills coaching with me here. The page includes testimonials from current and former students.]

Introducing CoachBot: Your Personal Language Taskmaster

For languages that aren’t new, I often feel like I’m stagnating and get bored when I reach the intermediate levels. This can reflect a lack of materials from which to study (as was the case with Pashto when I first started studying it) or — more commonly — a surfeit of materials. This creates a kind of choice paralysis where the number of options means I’m far less likely to sit down and pick one of them. (In a similar way, I'll sometimes choose not to watch any of the in-flight entertainment because there are too many choices to pick from.)

Studying a brand new language is (almost) always fun: you’re making quick progress, everything is new so you still have that nice-and-shiny feeling, and you feel like you’re really on your way to success. Continuing that study after two to four years of effort is a little harder. Like with any longer-term project, you start having to find ways to remind yourself of why you’re even working on it in the first place. It can often feel like you’ve lost that original magic somehow, even to the extent that you question whether you actually want to learn the language.

It is useful to address some of these issues ahead of time. That way, when you hit a period of less energy or motivation, you have a pre-formulated plan of action (made by you when you weren’t consumed by whatever mood is dominant). For me, this takes the form of making lists of suggestions to my future-self. I have pre-made task lists for:

• When I’m travelling
• When I’m feeling sick
• When I have no time to study
• When I have oodles of time to study
• When I have lots of energy and enthusiasm for learning
• When I have no enthusiasm for learning

Try to have at least 10 or 15 tasks in whatever lists you do end up creating. Maybe save a few pages at the back of your language notebook to list these tasks. This way, you always have them handy. It helps to have a good amount of variety in the tasks you pre-assign to yourself.

I keep lists as described above, but they weren’t as effective as I'd hoped. I’d glance at the tasks, feel only a limited enthusiasm for the options available and then put the list to one side. I needed a different solution.

I happened to be teaching myself to program/code at around the same time, so I thought this might make an interesting practice problem to try to solve. (I was studying Python and so I found a way to make a web app that uses that to connect to Flask.)

CoachBot is the free tool I designed to solve the problem of study choice paralysis for language-learners. It’s still only a prototype, but I'm soft-launching it here now since I imagine it might help those reading who are in similar situations.

CoachBot gives you a task that you can complete within a specific time-frame. If you have only 5 minutes, it'll pick a random task from the database that I curated and wrote myself. Have an hour? It'll suggest a different kind of task. If you don't want to do a particular task that it suggests, just click a button to get a new one.

These are the kinds of tasks I suggest when working with students one-on-one. They’re also the kinds of tasks I had written down in my lists. As of writing, there are 386 unique tasks in the database, which means that the suggestions are far more varied and creative than anything I was previously using.

I’d suggest you use it as follows: if you ever feel like you don’t know what to do to keep going with your language studies, open up CoachBot, pick a time corresponding to your needs and do whatever it tells you to do. When you’re done, make a note of what you did and how long it took in your learning log. Consider doing another session.

I’ve been using this for a few weeks already and can attest to its value. One of the key benefits I’ve found is just in getting started. Sometimes I’ll only need to do a five-minute task before I realise that there was something else that I wanted to read or study and then I’ll get busy working on that.

There are lots of features that I hope to build in for future versions. I want to include user accounts and tracking of how much time you spend on the different tasks. I want to sub-divide by language skill (i.e. which skill is being trained) and eventually to build in some kind of guidance and interactivity to how the tool functions. But for now, use it as it is: get some studying done by outsourcing the choice of what you’ll be studying.

There are more details on the website itself. You can click through to the project’s roadmap where you can see an updated version of features coming soon. You can also make suggestions for tasks that you’d like included in the Bot and/or specific features you’d like me to build as part of the project.

[Special thanks to Alex, Ian, Kevin and Peter for patiently answering my questions while I was building this initial prototype].

Randomise Your Learning

Scientists of various stripes have been studying how best to learn for many years. We can draw a variety of conclusions from this academic literature, but one of the more surprising results is that randomised practice is better than when you focus on a particular topic to the exclusion of everything else.

This means that when you're revising for end-of-year exams covering a number of subjects, it helps to test yourself on all the subjects at the same time, randomly switching between the different areas, instead of picking just one subject and working through each one individually.

The same applies to language learning. More and more people are choosing to use spaced-repetition applications like Anki, but most times I look at how the decks are organised, I see cards and information organised by topic.

This misses out on the opportunity to 'interleave' (the term used by the literature.) The benefit from interleaving your testing of cards probably comes from the fact that it's slightly harder to switch from a French vocabulary context into Japanese or Arabic. Your brain has to work a little harder to recall the information, so the network connections are stronger than if you'd studied all the words from the same language together.

When I open up Anki, I see the following:

I have one deck (called "All The Things") which contains all my cards. There is a lot you can do with in-built and plugin support for tags so I'm able to dice and segment the cards as I wish. This means when I'm reviewing my decks, I'll get one card with Arabic vocabulary one minute, then something testing me on shark anatomy the next, followed by some Python coding-related knowledge I'm learning.

Reviews are harder, but the concepts and facts also stick much better in my mind. Try interleaving your study and see if it helps.

To read more on this, check out this wonderful meta-review: "Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology" by John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, and Daniel T. Willingham in the journal 'Psychological Science in the Public Interest'.

Taskpaper --> Omnifocus

This is a neat trick for anyone who happens to use both Taskpaper and Omnifocus apps. I think this has probably been there for a long time, but I heard Gabe Weatherhead talking about it on the latest Mac Power Users podcast. (Read more of Gabe's writings on Taskpaper if you're interested in a deep dive).

I'll assume you know something about the Taskpaper syntax. This video explains more in case you're lost already. The Taskpaper syntax and .tp extension is useful because I can write lists of projects and things to do in Drafts on iOS without having to mess around with apps and ticking boxes and so on.

The trick which Gabe explained relates to getting hierarchically sorted task lists from Taskpaper into Omnifocus. It's as simple as copy-->paste. So I can go from something complicated in Taskpaper like this:

to a set of tasks like this in Omnifocus:

It's a great tip, and a great time-saver.

Things We Control: On Internal vs External Goals

When it comes to goal setting, I’ve found it helps to distinguish between the kinds of goals you envision and create. I first came across this concept in a book on Stoic philosophy: A Guide to the Good Life, by William Irvine. (If you’re interested in the full details/writeup, read chapter five.)

The basic premise Irvine lays out goes as follows:

Instead of seeking contentment by trying to change the external world, rather we should think about how to change ourselves (i.e. internally).

He splits up the internal / external distinction a bit further:

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Here you can see that there are some things over which we have complete control. There are also things which we don't completely control. This can be split into things we have no control over at all, and things we have some control over but not total. (This is actually a trichotomy derived from the philosopher Epictetus.)

An example of something we have no control over at all is when the sun rises. Things that we have some control over but not total are generally impulses, desires and aversions, so you can control your attitude in a certain situation or what kind of effort you put into a language-learning exercise. Things we have complete control over include our opinions, the goals we set, the values we consider important and our character.

This is a really useful way of splitting things up, and you can maybe see why it might be useful. We should spend no time at all thinking about or worrying about the things that we have no control over at all. In terms of language learning, this might relate to any putative 'innate' or genetically-based learning ability or aptitude. You're stuck with who you are, so there's no point being upset, particularly when it comes to comparing yourself to others. (Plus, a lot of this discussion of 'innate talent' for learning languages misses the point: there are many things that one can do to speed up one's progress.)

The other two categories are really what we should be concerning ourselves with, since this is where we have the ability to influence the outcome. We can set our goals in a useful manner (as described above) and we can change our impulses and perspectives on particular tasks.

The practical realisation from all of this, for a language learner, is that it really makes sense to find ways to set internal goals as opposed to external goals.

Think of a game of tennis, for example: you might have a goal to 'win the match'. This would be an externally facing goal. It is one over which you don't have complete control. Your opponent may have advantages over you that you can't anticipate or prepare for.

Alternatively, an internal goal might be to 'play my best'. This has the advantage of being something you have full control over (i.e. how your effort is directed) and it is not something that can be refuted or quashed by your opponent on the court. Even if you lose the match, by taking this perspective of 'doing one's best' you'll be able to take solace in the fact that there was actually nothing you could have done to change this outcome. Plus, you met your goal (presuming you did actually try your best).

In terms of language-learning, this translates to formulating your goals in terms of process rather than fixed targets. So: rather 'study for 10 minutes every day' than 'reach a B2 level by September'. This way, you're setting yourself up for success and you can focus on what matters in your studies without the feeling of pressure. Same thing with something like writing a PhD. (I've written elsewhere about how you can think of writing a PhD in terms of time rather than wordcounts or sections completed.)

I hope I've convinced you that goal-setting can be an important lever in how you tackle the meta-goals of your language-learning journey. It's certainly been an important realisation for me in how I setup goals and intentions. It also works really well with commitment tools like Beeminder, though that's a topic for another day!

[This is an edited excerpt from my new book, Master Arabic, now available for discounted pre-order here. Use the offer code 'preorderthankyou' at checkout to get 10% off.]

Everything You Need to Study Jordanian Arabic

I've been living in Jordan for a little over four months, and I'm pleased to say that I seem to have converted what Syrian/Lebanese colloquial Arabic I learnt in the past into the Jordanian dialect.

Along the way, I've used various resources and watched various materials that have really helped. This blog post will be my review of what is available for the student of the Jordanian dialect.

Lots of people say that you can just choose 'Levantine' and that's enough. "You don't need to specialise any further than that," I've heard on a number of occasions. My experience is that the country-level distinctions between Jordanian, Syrian and Lebanese Arabic actually do matter, particularly once you get past the pure basics and want to have more natural conversations.

For various reasons, Jordanian dialect resources are under-represented in the market for books and audio resources. They're either subsumed under the 'Levantine' bracket or books generally tend to offer Syrian or Lebanese flavours. It is for this reason that I think it's worth taking stock and gathering together all the resources available for students hoping to travel to Jordan or make a study of the specific dialect spoken here.

Being the last somewhat-calm country in the non-Gulf non-north-African Arab-speaking world, it's a preferred destination for year-abroad students mid-university. If that's you, I think you'll find this post really useful.

How to Use These Resources

There are a lot of books and resources listed below. The expectation is not that you'll go through them all, but that you should rather be aware of what is out there. There aren't really many options for textbooks, so you're basically stuck with Hakini Arabi. (Good thing it's a well-designed course, with lots of dialogue and practice). I'd recommend the serious student of Jordanian Arabic get hold of both Tiedemann's 101 Verbs book and Diwan Baladna. Both are filled with material you'll find nowhere else. (See below for details on these books).

As for the rest, pick and choose: watch a comedy show; do some listening practice exercises; take an iTalki lesson with someone from Jordan. Those final steps are up to you, and depend a lot more on your goals and how fast you want to go.

If you'd like one-on-one mentoring/coaching in your journey to learn Jordanian dialect (and/or standard written Arabic), have a read of what I offer and get in touch with me.

For a one-stop-shop guide to improving your Arabic and getting beyond the intermediate level, particularly for students who've studied for a year or two already, read my new book, Master Arabic.

Grammar

• Jordanian Arabic Grammar: A Short Guide for Beginners (Peace Corps)

This is a useful overview of the main grammatical features of the language. The grammar covered is very basic, but it is nice to have it all in one place.

• CGE Jordan's Videos (YouTube)

CGE Jordan Institute for Arabic Studies have also published an indispensable book (see below), but these are their videos. They teach the kinds of things you'll never find in a book, and they also practice them in pairs. They also have material for intermediate and advanced students, like this video in which Fred teaches how to intensify your sentences:

If you learn best from watching videos and have the time to wade through hours and hours of short lessons, this is probably an excellent place to start. I spoke with the director of CGE, in many of the videos, for the premium edition of 'Master Arabic'.

Textbooks

• Hakini Arabi: Palestinian and Jordanian Colloquial for Beginners

This is your only option for a full textbook covering Jordanian dialect for beginners. It is taught as if you haven't necessarily studied any other Arabic before, so parts of it move a little slow, but that's a minor quibble. The book comes with a link to audio files that you download online, and these are essential for working through the dialogues and listening exercises. There are lots of group role-playing exercises suggested in the book, but even if you're studying on your own this is a valuable one-stop shop to work through.

Different parts of Jordan speak slightly different sub-dialects, and this book offers options for three varieties: 'Jordanian', 'Palestinian-Rural' and 'Jordanian and Palestinian-Urban'. For an idea of the kinds of materials contained within, here's an example of a vocabulary list from early on:

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and here's an example of a context/phrasal explainer from towards the end of the book:

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For a total beginner, I would certainly start with Hakini Arabi. One of the first things I did after moving to Amman was to go through this book.

• Living Arabic: A Comprehensive Introductory Course

Living Arabic is part of the Munther Younes Arabic-tuition empire. He generally produces solid materials and though I've never seen a copy of this book, I've been told by a number of students that it contains useful materials for Jordanian Arabic. The text teaches MSA alongside colloquial, so this may not be totally suited to your goals. Perhaps the best scenario for this is if you get a chance to use it in a library. You can probably work your way through the Jordanian Arabic sections in a few days/weeks.

Words and Sentences

• Diwan Baladna: The Unprecedented Spoken Arabic Dictionary

This is a thematic dictionary and phrasebook for Jordanian Arabic. I hesitated to buy this for a long time on account of its cover, but I saw it in a bookshop and the content is really excellent. It comes with an audio CD, though that is problematic since few computers come with CD readers; I hope the authors will make the data available for download as well in the near future.

The first part of the book is filled with expressions, phrases, phrase + answer combinations and other materials that you don't usually find, even in books specialising in colloquial readers. Here is an example of phrases that come with certain responses:

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and here are some expressions from their very rich selection, also showing the explanations and how the book makes them very easy to use/pick up:

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The rest of the book is filled with thematically-organised vocab lists (sorted into Arabic / translation / Arabic plural columns). It's useful to have them all in one place, I suppose, and to know that these are what Jordanians use (as opposed to Lebanese or Syrian speakers of Arabic), but the real value of the book is the expressions and phrases contained in the first half.

• Jordan Dialect (Memrise Course + Audio)

I include this not because the word selection is particularly amazing but simply because it seems to be the only course on Memrise (the vocabulary-learning platform) that teaches Jordanian dialect alongside the audio files. There are lots of other courses offered, including some by students currently in Amman, but none of them offer audio files as well. There are only 736 words available to learn, but it's all Jordanian dialect. To my mind, this course is low-hanging fruit. Someone's made a great selection of vocabulary, most of which you'll use at some point, so I'd recommend just working your way through it relatively quickly.

• The 101 Most Used Verbs in Spoken Arabic: Jordan & Palestine

This book is more than just a guide to using verbs in Jordanian Arabic. It's a repository of sentences and their translations that comes with a CD filled with pronunciation. (As with other books, I really wish CGE would offer the files as digital downloads, since I and most others don't have a CD reader/drive).

The title is actually really deceptive, and I held off getting a copy for far too long because I thought it was just lists of verbs. It is, but at the same time it's a rich trove of sentences, phrases and associated vocabulary. I'd say this book is pretty much essential for anyone who wants to learn Jordanian Arabic. Take a look at this page, for example, to see the kind of thing 101 Verbs contains:

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It's a fantastic mix of phrases, sentences, vocabulary and literal translation or explanation. There are also useful appendices and introductory materials about the grammar of the Arabic verb, lists of broken plurals and various indexes so you can look things up as well.

I spoke with the author of the book (and director of CGE) for the premium edition of 'Master Arabic'.

• Basic Phrasebook - Jordanian Arabic (WikiTravel)

This is nothing more than a list of useful phrases, but as a way to pick up some essentials, this is a free and easy option.

• Pre-Departure Arabic Materials (PeaceCorps)

There are also audio files associated with this document. This is a basic overview of some situations that an English-speaker might encounter in Amman, and offers some basic grammar and vocabulary alongside phrases and cultural explanation. Nothing advanced here, but ideal for total beginners or visitors.

• Conversational Arabic Quick and Easy: Jordanian Dialect

I'd advise you to stay away from this book. It's sold on Amazon and seems to be frequently suggested as a 'suggested purchase' when you buy anything else relating to Jordanian Arabic. Unfortunately, the contents are not very useful. The book also does not use Arabic script; it is all transliterated. Caveat emptor.

• The Arabic Student: Jordanian Arabic

These are all the posts from 'The Arabic Student's blog relating to the Jordanian dialect. It was last updated in 2013, but as a resource it's extremely useful, and he covers a numbers of explanations of phrases, grammar and other interesting features of the dialect. Posts often discuss specific videos (or sections of videos) in detail, so it's a great place to get a taste for the unique features of the dialect alongside some entertainment and comedy.

Listening / Video

• Jordanian Dialect Podcast (Soundcloud)

I co-host this podcast together with Lina Obeidat. We discuss a new topic each week. Show notes include translations of difficult words. The idea behind this podcast was to have some materials available for intermediate students that weren't too difficult, but at the same time didn't dumb things down by using too much English and so on. Details on how to subscribe are available here, or just follow us on Soundcloud.

• Talk In Arabic

Talk In Arabic is a great resource for those who want spoken materials in the various dialects of the Arab-speaking world. The Levantine Dialect section contains a few dozen videos and audio lessons in Jordanian dialect alongside thematically-organised vocabulary lists. Everything is available as audio files (with transcripts and translations) so this is a useful service. Note that the site isn't updated that often, so you might find you can make use of all the materials in a month or two.

• Female Show (Roya)

This is a fun comedy starring comedy superstars, Tima Shomali and Raja'ee Qawwas. I've watched the three seasons of this show through from start to finish and learnt a lot in the process. The level is suitable for an intermediate-level speaker. I'd recommend starting at with season 1, episode 1, to give it a try:

• Usfuriyya (Roya)

This is a medical comedy set in Jordan. Think Scrubs, or think someone trying to imitate Scrubs in the Middle East. The Arabic is also at an appropriate level for someone who has a year or two under their belt.

• Roya TV

Roya is Jordan's preeminent contemporary TV channel. They commission most of the new dramas, comedies and other shows coming out of the country. There's always something interesting to watch here. To watch only their news click here. For their comedy shows, click here. For drama shows, click here. Highly recommended as a way to get exposure to the sound of the dialect.

• Jordan TV

This is the YouTube channel for Jordan's state-run TV station. You can view news broadcasts and more traditional dramas. The content is much more staid in comparison to Roya, but it exposes you to a different style of speech and local culture, so perhaps find a way to intersperse this in with your Roya comedies and dramas.

• LangMedia Arabic

There are a number of different links on this page (to CultureTalk or to their page of Jordanian/Palestinian dialect resources). This is a real treasure trove of materials, much of which is provided with audio, video and full transcripts/translations.

There are also some exercises to go through to test your comprehension. Here's two Jordanians talking about the education system using dialect. Note the transcripts and translations below.

• N20 Comedy

More Jordanian comedy shows. If you watch enough locally-produced TV and comedy you will notice that the same faces show up in many different programmes. Note that N20 has branched out to include other dialects, but it should be fairly easy to distinguish which is which. Lots of material here.

• Accents Library (DLIFLC)

Select Arabic. You'll be presented with a number of stories read by people from different countries. Jordan is one of them. Compare and contrast with the other dialects. This is more a resource to sharpen your ear. Mother-tongue Arabic speakers grew up among this diversity and so are attuned to the tonal and phrasal differences between dialects. This is a resource that can help you improve this skill on your own.

• Phone Conversations

This is a great database and resource of authentic spoken materials in the form of recorded (and transcribed) phone conversations.

Select Arabic and then Levantine. It'll (mostly) be clear when items relate to Jordan. Each conversation comes with a transcription, translation and study plan. The recordings usually last around ten minutes, so it's perfect for a quick study session. Use this to get exposure to authentic natural language.

• GLOSS (DLIFLC)

GLOSS is a resource developed by the US military. You can select the dialect for which you see materials (Levantine, in this case) and it'll show you different exercises to complete. There were over 240 unique items as of January 2017.

Once you go into the individual items, it states which country the dialect is from. I really like that you can choose whether you want the questions and instructions in Arabic, though the interface itself is really horrible. Here's one of the exercises where you pair off words to two columns, depending on the meaning:

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Despite the issues with the interface, there's loads of really useful material to work your way through here. This is a great resource.

• Aamiya Arabic (YouTube)

This YouTube channel covers a number of dialects, but you can click through to the playlists to choose Jordan-specific materials. These videos aren't specifically designed for students, but they provide lots of authentic dialogue and dialect appropriate for intermediate students. In this video, for example, sisters Hiba and Lynn talk between themselves about what they're selling at a market stall:

THere's lots to explore in this YouTube channel, and lots of phrases and unique Jordanian expressions to file away in your personal language notebook. Wade in!

• Kharabish Comedy

A mix of dialects here, but Kharabish are originally a Jordanian outfit, so lots of their older material uses that. As with earlier comedy channels, you'll recognise many of the actors and some of the skit premises.

• Ex in the City

This is mostly in English, so probably too basic for intermediate students, but the series covers a number of different expressions and culturally-relevant context. The host explains a new expression each episode.

Teachers / iTalki

There are currently, as of my writing in January 2017, only three tutors from Jordan on iTalki. I've only studied with one, so I'll recommend her highly. You'll recognise her from the Jordanian dialect podcast that we recently started together. Lina Obeidat works with beginners and intermediate students alike, and makes Skype lessons fun by combining free-flow conversation with a variety of other exercises and challenges along the way. I credit Lina with the lion's share of improving my spoken Arabic, so I'd highly recommend you work with her to blast through any difficulties you may have.

Institutes / Study Abroad

I haven't studied at either of these institutes, so I can't attest to the quality of the programmes they offer etc, but I do know that many people in Amman study at these two schools. CGE is founded by Fred Tiedemann, who wrote the essential 101 Verbs I mentioned above and produced many of the videos on their indispensable YouTube channel. They (seem to) take a colloquial-first approach.

Qasid is the other main alternative, and many universities in Europe and the US send their year-abroad language students there for tuition. Both institutes come highly recommended by people who've studied there, but as always with study-abroad programmes, a lot depends on what you put into them.

[NOTE: This list of materials is adapted and drawn from the premium materials available alongside my new book, 'Master Arabic'. For the full resource guide covering other dialects as well as tried-and-tested advice from experts and others who've made it to an advanced level, get the premium edition.]

Pet Peeve: Tech Switching

I read a decent amount of tech media/press. Barely a day goes by when there isn't someone in my RSS feed explaining how they dropped application X for application Y. This seems to happen most often for frequently-used applications or workflows like scheduling/calendars or email.

I won't call out the specific blog post that set me writing this post, but suffice it to say that I wish there was a clause (in the contract of life) forcing tech writers or bloggers to state why the application they're singing the praises of is better than the one they were using up to now. Specifically, are there any new features, or does it just look shinier? Also, have you been using it for longer than a day or two?

I'm pretty solid and stable in the applications I use. It'll take something pretty seismic to rid me of DevonThink or Tinderbox or Mailmate. But if you catch me flip-flopping in my tech-related writing, please call me out on it.

The ways memory skills augment your life

I released a new episode of Sources and Methods today. This week I spoke with Lynne Kelly, author of ‘The Memory Code: The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments', a fascinating exploration of the intersection between history, archaeological sleuthing and memory techniques. We delved into the contents of her book as well as the practical applications she found for these ancient skills.

I’ve been fascinated with the work that Lynne has been doing on the history of memory and her own personal memory ‘experiments’. If you need some inspiration as to things you might learn (or ways you might learn them), head over to her blog and the page entitled ‘My 33 Memory Experiments’. She generously includes photos and explanations of how the various systems work. Her latest groups places them in even further context. As someone who’s been following her memory experiments for a while, I found the book really useful to understand why she was picking a certain technique over another.

She’s about to start a new project involving memory skills, education and schools (she discusses that in the podcast around the 34-minute mark) and I look forward to reading about the outcome.

New Year, New Arabic-language Podcast

This year, in combination with my publishing a book about getting from intermediate-advanced level in Arabic, I wanted to find a way to stay committed to improving my own language. So I’ve started a mostly-Arabic-only podcast.

There are two episodes up already, both from the ‘Jordanian Dialect’ series. This series is recorded with co-host Lina Obeidat, my good friend and Arabic teacher of several years. (Book lessons with Lina on iTalki here. She’s also a regular contributor to talkinarabic.com’s Levantine materials).

During the first episode, we talked about the winter and the rain in Jordan (where we’re both based), and I learnt about the existence of a period of 40 days when the weather is much colder. In our second episode, we talked about taxis in Amman. We struggled to find many positive things to say about the system or the drivers of taxis, but tried to see things from their perspective. At the end, I learned a new proverb that was appropriate to our discussion.

In the coming weeks I’ll be adding more shows to the podcast. There will be a show focusing on Classical Arabic texts. There will be a show on Modern Literature. Potentially we’ll have a show for Egyptian Colloquial (sigh!) but that depends on my finding someone to host it (let me know if you’re interested).

I’m looking forward to recording more episodes. Please leave a comment over on Soundcloud with any feedback you might have. Also, subscribe on iTunes by clicking on this link or search my name and you should find it. The podcast is also available on Overcast. Just search the name and it’ll show up.

Pre-Order Now: 'Master Arabic'

We're getting closer to finalising the materials for our new book and resource guide, 'Master Arabic'. The full description of the book reads as follows:

This will be my thirteenth year studying the Arabic language. I've tried everything: university programmes, intensive courses, self-study and more.

My Arabic level remained at the intermediate level for years, a learning plateau, and I felt like I wasn't progressing. I spent the last three years getting to the advanced level and I'm now (finally) able to communicate comfortably in a dialect and tackling contemporary fiction.

I've decided to write up some of the techniques, attitudes and resources that are available to the intermediate student of Arabic. This is the condensed product of years of experimentation. This book contains advice on how to improve your reading, writing, speaking and listening skills and also offers suggestions for resources you can use to tackle each particular skill.

The premium package includes over a dozen interviews with leading educators, Arabists and students who impart their secrets on how to pass through to advanced materials. It also includes life-time access to an online resource database of materials to study Arabic.

As a way of saying thank you to all those who subscribed to the mailing list and to ring in the new year, 'Master Arabic' is now available for pre-order. A discount code is provided below that will allow you to purchase the book for 10% off.

There are two editions:

- Basic Edition -- You'll get a copy of the e-book in PDF format. You will also receive access to an exclusive curated guide to materials, content and study aids for students of Arabic.

- Premium Edition -- You'll get everything in the basic edition, plus multiple formats of the ebook to suit various e-readers. You will also get access to over a dozen interviews with students, teachers and experts from Egypt, Jordan and the United States who have unique insights into learning Arabic.

Feel free to email if you have any questions about the book, the materials or have a topic that you really feel we should cover in the book.

USE DISCOUNT CODE 'preorderthankyou' for 10% off. This one-off discount will no longer be offered once the book is released at the end of January.

Dinner Party Decision Matrix: A Python Tool

Some friends were coming round for dinner this evening and I couldn’t decide what to cook. I couldn’t decide because there were too many variables floating around that would impact the decision.

So I decided to make an app.

I wanted something tasty but that also was relatively hassle-free. I wanted something that didn’t take too much time to prepare, but it still needed to be different from the kind of food I’d cook in a rush at the end of a long day.

I’d come across the idea of weighted decision-making a while back, and really like its premise; you say how important various factors are to you and then rate all the different options according to those same factors. At the end, you’re left with a score that can be said to be more objective than just your gut feeling.

So yesterday morning I listed a bunch of the factors that were important to me in coming to a decision about what to cook. I figured I could get some coding practice by making a tool that would work to calculate the best option from any combination of choices.

I put the finishing touches on the decision-making tool this morning. You can check it out on Github, though you’ll need to know a little about how Python works to get it going for yourself. I’m fairly sure my code looks horrific to a seasoned professional. There are probably ways I could have standardised the flow of questions and improved the output, but for now, I’m satisfied.

The app ended up picking the following for dinner (photo below):

- Courgette, chickpea and feta filo pastry pie

- Roast beetroot and pistachio salad

- Kale, pomegranate and shredded chicken salad

- and a beetroot and chocolate cake

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I learnt a bunch of things about Python while coding the tool:

1. When you run a x= raw_input(“Ask question here”) command, the information allocated to x will be in a string format. If you are collecting numbers, you’ll need to convert it to an integer format by using int().
2. Lists and dictionaries can be tricky, particularly when you’re looping over them or looping over certain keys etc.
3. It helps to test while you code. This particular function wasn’t too complex to understand, so I just pushed on without testing so much. At some point towards the end, I realised something in the middle was wrong: cue much debugging. I keep reading about the importance of having in-built tests. I’m not sure what that would mean / have meant in the context of this particular app, but I imagine I’ll find out in due course.
4. Coding is fun and appeals to the compulsive side of my brain. I rarely need to be urged back to the task at hand when I’m coding. This probably has something to do with the quick feedback loop that coding enables. In any case, I’m hooked (again).