Abstract Fluency studies published in TESOL Quarterly have investigated processing aspects of various language skills and knowledge, such as reading, writing, vocabulary, and pragmatics. On the other hand, most of the published works on fluency have examined the temporal, pausing, and repair phenomena in L2 speech and its underlying cognitive mechanisms, which is the focus of the current article. This article overviews fluency studies by looking into their dominant theoretical frameworks (e.g., Segalowitz's triad model of fluency, task‐based language research and Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency [CAF], and usage‐based approach), varied methodological approaches (e.g., interventional, correlational, and descriptive research designs), and pedagogical applications. The article also addresses some of the methodological issues such as the operationalization of utterance fluency measures and correlation between L1 and L2 fluency measures, and future directions by synthesizing the research findings and gaps in the literature.