Fluency

Fluency (also called volubility and eloquency) refers to continuity, smoothness, rate, and effort in speech production. It is also used to characterize language production, language ability or language proficiency. In speech language pathology it means the flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are joined when speaking quickly, where fluency disorder has been used as a collective term for cluttering and stuttering. Fluency is a term concerning language production on the one hand, which is used in language ability or language proficiency It is also used to characterize speech production on the other hand with some overlap. In speech language pathology it means the smoothness or flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are joined when speaking quickly. It refers to "continuity, smoothness, rate, and effort in speech production". The term fluency disorder has been used as a collective term for cluttering and stuttering since at least 1993. Fluency is the property of a person or of a system that delivers information quickly and with expertise. Language fluency is one of a variety of terms used to characterize or measure a person's language ability, often used in conjunction with accuracy and complexity. Although there are no widely agreed-upon definitions or measures of language fluency, someone is typically said to be fluent if their use of the language appears fluid, or natural, coherent, and easy as opposed to slow, halting use. In other words, fluency is often described as the ability to produce language on demand and be understood. Varying definitions of fluency characterize it by the language user's automaticity, their speed and coherency of language use, or the length and rate of their speech output. Theories of automaticity postulate that more fluent language users can manage all of the components of language use without paying attention to each individual component of the act. In other words, fluency is achieved when one can access language knowledge and produce language unconsciously, or automatically.