What actually happens when you ask
Native speakers repeat louder, not slower. That is the finding nobody warns you about and it is why the general request fails: sorry produces the identical sentence at the identical speed, at higher volume, and you miss it again.
The specific request produces something different, because you have told them exactly what is missing. Sorry, oat or almond gets you two words back. Sorry, was that two or three gets you a number.
The three shapes
Name the gap: sorry, after the coffee? Offer the choice: oat or almond? Confirm back the part you did get: so two large, and the bagel toasted, was there anything after that?
All three do the same job, which is to convert an unbounded request into a bounded one. They are short enough to say under pressure and that is not incidental, a repair sentence you have to construct is a repair sentence you will not use.
Why nodding is expensive
Everybody nods. It is the default because it costs nothing in the moment and it feels like the polite option. The cost arrives thirty seconds later, at the hatch, with the wrong drink and a queue.
The nod is also invisible to you. You do not remember the moments you did it, which is exactly why a transcript is useful: the score marks every place you were asked something and answered around it.
The thirty percent
Repair is the heaviest criterion in the everyday rubric, thirty percent, more than vocabulary or grammar, because it is the skill that decides whether somebody survives a second language rather than the one that decides how they sound.
No other product scores it, and the reason is structural: scoring it needs a transcript and a verified quote rather than an impression. Maya Brooks is the five-minute version, free, and she says her order once.
