What a rep is

The word comes from the gym, which may be a bit unusual for a language app. So, plainly: a rep is one completed exercise in a topic. You start it, you speak all the way through it out loud, you finish. That’s one.

Topic fluency doesn’t come in a single pass — you need several reps to get familiar with a topic. The first time through you’re mostly working out what you want to say. The second and the third are where the sentences start arriving without the pauses. Nobody does one repetition in the gym and goes home either.

The rest of the comparison holds too. You show up, you do the reps, nobody grades them, you leave. There’s nothing interesting about any of it, and that’s the point — reps are boring on purpose, and that’s why they work.

I spent a long time looking for a way to explain what OkeeTalk actually is, and finally came up with “your personal gym for speaking”. I think this describes the app idea pretty well.

A rep costs about ten minutes and one topic. If you want, you can do a second rep right away, from the final screen. This is a good time to do it, while your impression is fresh and you have an idea of what you want to say differently. The other way is to come back to a topic days later: the Repeat section on the main screen brings topics back on the third day, in a week, and in a month.

Consistency is important for good practice, but it’s ok to miss a day. There are no streaks in OkeeTalk. And, unlike a gym, you shouldn’t wait for Monday to start!