What is Fluency?
Fluency is the ability to express yourself smoothly and comfortably in real time — from Latin 'fluere', to flow. Contrary to the everyday assumption, fluency is not perfection or native-level mastery; linguists use it to describe flow, and many put conversational fluency around CEFR B2.
The perfection myth does real damage: learners who define fluency as 'never making mistakes' postpone speaking indefinitely, waiting for a readiness that only speaking can create. Meanwhile, plenty of B1 speakers happily live their lives in their second language, mistakes and all.
Fluency is also domain-specific: you can be fluent ordering in restaurants and lost in a tax office — in your native language too, come to think of it. Building it means expanding the situations where you flow, one situation at a time.
What it means for your speaking
Flow is a speed skill, and speed skills are trained by doing the thing at speed. Thirty seconds of real-time conversation daily — where hesitation is safe but the clock is honest — is deliberate fluency practice in its purest form.
Practise out loud — 30 seconds a day →