What is fluency? Excerpt from research:

"..The last significant function of output is to create greater automaticity, which is one pedagogical goal in SLA. Little effort is required to execute an automatic process( involved when the learner carries out the task without awareness or attention) as it has become routinized and automatized just as the steps involved in walking towards a bike, getting out the key, unlocking it, pushing it, getting on it and riding it, requiring little thought and less time. Mclaughlin (1987:134) claimed that automatization involves “a learned response that has been built up through the consistent mapping of the same input to the same pattern of activation over many trials.” Here this notion is extended to output, meaning that consistent and successful mapping or practice of grammar to output results in automatic processing (Loschky & Bley-Vroman, 1993).

In many researchers’ opinion, automaticity benefits learning. Firstly, as automatic processing consumes fewer attentional resources than does controlled processing (involved when conscious effort and attention is required to perform a task), the more automatic performance becomes the more attentional resources left over for other purposes. For example, if one can handle the phonology and syntax of a second language automatically, then more attention can be paid to processing semantic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic levels of communication. Secondly, when a mechanism becomes automatic it will process information very quickly and accurately. Thirdly, there are strong reasons for associating automaticity with important aspects of fluency (Skehan, 1998; Hulstijn, 1997,etc). Then what is fluency?The last significant function of output is to create greater automaticity, which is one pedagogical goal in SLA.

Little effort is required to execute an automatic process( involved when the learner carries out the task without awareness or attention) as it has become routinized and automatized just as the steps involved in walking towards a bike, getting out the key, unlocking it, pushing it, getting on it and riding it, requiring little thought and less time. Mclaughlin (1987:134) claimed that automatization involves “a learned response that has been built up through the consistent mapping of the same input to the same pattern of activation over many trials.” Here this notion is extended to output, meaning that consistent and successful mapping or practice of grammar to output results in automatic processing (Loschky & Bley-Vroman, 1993).
In many researchers’ opinion, automaticity benefits learning. Firstly, as automatic processing consumes fewer attentional resources than does controlled processing (involved when conscious effort and attention is required to perform a task), the more automatic performance becomes the more attentional resources left over for other purposes. For example, if one can handle the phonology and syntax of a second language automatically, then more attention can be paid to processing semantic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic levels of communication. Secondly, when a mechanism becomes automatic it will process information very quickly and accurately. Thirdly, there are strong reasons for associating automaticity with important aspects of fluency (Skehan, 1998; Hulstijn, 1997,etc). Then what is fluency?.."