TESOL/Fluency
Fluency in ESL has a slightly different meaning from fluency in general, which is facility in the use of a language. In ESL, it is restricted to speech and refers to the speaker's ability to link language units with reasonable ease and speed. [1]
In the seventies, it was popular to teach fluency using substitution drills. Starting in the mid 80s, a notion of message-focused fluency emerged, where fluency was considered facility in using language to express a message. In this view, form is not important as long as mistakes do not get in the way of the message. In particular, Brumfit (1984) described how to make a fluency building activities. These activities should focus on the message, have a message determined by the student speaking rather than by the teacher or textbook, and proceed with minimal teacher correction. [2]