Educational practices have been under considerable upheaval: first, the Corona pandemic forced all education to be rearranged to fit an online mode, which then led to some of the flexibility and distance learning ideas becoming norms in higher education. Next, the fast spread of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools has undermined the concept of flexibility and distance learning and brought new challenges to the arrangement of study processes. This article presents some observations on challenges that language teachers encounter while designing activities and courses for developing students’ oral communication skills. Practice shows that some of the recent generally accepted forms of implementing studies cannot always co-exist with the current reality.