Michael Little is a writer, teacher, and lifelong language learner who spent years watching talented students memorize their way through textbooks and then freeze the moment someone spoke to them. After a decade of teaching English and trying to learn three languages with the traditional toolkit of courses, apps, and grammar drills, he stumbled onto a different approach: letting AI conversation partners give him the daily speaking practice no human schedule could provide. The experiment worked so quickly that he rebuilt his entire teaching method around it, and this book is the result.
His method rests on a simple conviction: the bottleneck in language learning has never been intelligence or memory it is the shortage of low stakes speaking opportunities. He has written and spoken widely about using AI as a rehearsal room for real conversation, helping everyone from hesitant travelers to exam candidates to heritage speakers reconnect with their family languages.
When he is not in conversation with his language-learning partners at all hours of the day, Michael lives in Lisbon, where he practices Portuguese with his neighbors, order nearly everything in restaurants without looking at the menu, and continues to be surprised by how much a person can say with five hundred words and a sense of humor.