Release 2.3

Happy Canada Day! 🇨🇦

For today's release, we are excited to introduce a new learning path structure.

The gap between "studying" and "speaking"

Most language apps are great at one thing: helping you recognize words on a screen. Tap the right answer, earn a little dopamine, then repeat. But recognition is not speaking. After surveying some of our beginner learners, we realized that first learning flashcards and then going straight into convo simulation feels like stepping off a curb into traffic.

When we launched Speaking Drills in 2.1, we gave learners a way to practice isolated skills out loud: pronunciation, quick responses, patterned exchanges. Then we launched card collections, we gave you a home to organize what you'd saved. Both were useful. But they were separate islands where you study and then stumble into a simulation when you felt brave enough.

This release aims to connect those two distinct features we shipped.

Learning Paths, now with speaking drills built in.

Starting today, every Learning Path has speaking drills embedded directly into the flow with suggested vocabulary that are based on the unit theme and objective. It alternates with a "build-and-apply" loop:

Drill → Simulate → Drill → Simulate → Practice → Recap

Here's what that actually looks like. Say you're an A1 French learner working through a path on ordering food. Instead of:

1. Read a vocab list about la boulangerie.
2. Now do a full simulation where you have to order a baguette while someone talks back at you.

You get:

1. A short speaking drill: "Repeat these three phrases."
2. A focused micro-simulation: "The cashier asks what you'd like. Respond."
3. Another drill: "Here's what went well. Let's tighten your pronunciation on je voudrais."
4. A slightly bigger simulation: "You're in a busy café. Order a coffee and a pastry."
5. Freeform practice on any phrase you stumbled on.
6. A recap simulation that pulls everything together.

By the time you reach the final simulation, you've already said each phrase aloud multiple times in progressively harder contexts. And we've thought about the exact phrases and vocab to use that will be relevant to applying in each simulation.

Why this matters for beginners

A1 and A2 learners face a specific kind of anxiety. You know just enough to be aware of everything you cannot say. Simulations can feel overwhelming when the gap between what you know and what the scenario demands feels too wide.

We believe embedding drills inside the path closes that gap gradually. Each drill is a small win and every small simulation we make only slightly harder than what came before.

We think of it as a nicer builder, a gentler ramp into the immersive practice Orali was built for. The simulations are still there. They're still the heart of how you acquire language. But now there's a clear path leading up to them.

What's next

We're already working on extending this pattern: more granular feedback between drills and simulations, smarter difficulty ramping based on your performance, and paths tuned for specific real-world goals (travel, work, socializing).

In future releases we are also aiming to improve progress tracking and word familiarity and usage analytics so you can better understand where you need to shift your efforts practicing.

That's all for today, happy speaking – and drilling!

Got feature requests or feedback? Email us