A fluency disorder-otherwise known as stammering or stuttering- is a disorder by which the fluency of a person’s speech is hindered and becomes a daily struggle. It causes a disruption in at least one element of rate, rhythm, effort or automacity.
The sufferer may find it difficult to say certain words and phrases and this loss of control becomes apparent within their attempts of fluent speech in various contexts. Within normal fluent speech, breaks within the production of verbal communication allows the speaker to undergo linguistic processing, self-correction and the inhalation of air to enable the speaker to produce the proceeding utterance. Occasionally, certain words may be repeated, or phrases, such as ‘erm’ and ‘you know’ are used and produced with no noticeable tension as I am sure you have heard many people use! It is done to to allow linguistic processing within our minds. However, the difference with dysfluent speech, is that these breaks and repetitions are doing none of these helpful processing.  Yaruss (2015) suggests that disfluency…

“becomes a communication disorder when the stuttering interferes with the person doing what they want, e.g. talking on the phone, raising their hand in class, i.e. it impacts the person’s social communication, academic performance or occupational achievement”.

If a student stutters it can massively impact their educational achievements and social life. This is difficult enough to overcome in their native language, yet near impossible in a second. However, the correct intervention can aid the child in controlling their stutter in their first language, and thereupon aid them in overcoming it in their second language.

Interestingly, the vast majority of people who stutter start before the age of 5. Only 5% of the population will stutter at some point in their lifetime, ranging from a few weeks to several years. However, the majority will recover from the stuttering before the age of 6. This leaves only a 1% incidence rate within adulthood.

So don’t worry, most of the time it is not there to stay.