Tài liệu A Grammar for Reading and Writing

We do not read words, one by one. Meaning is contained not so much in individual words as in collections of words conveying broader or more specific ideas.
Readers thus make sense of a sentence by breaking it into meaningful chunks and examining their interrelationships. Skillful writers focus not so much on individual words, as on creating and rephrasing larger phrases and clauses.
The topics covered here describe the meaningful chunks of English sentence structure. In so doing they examine key grammatical principles underlying effective reading and writing.
Speaking Constructions, Not Words
When discussing speech, we say we know something when we can repeat it word for word. Yet, when we speak, we do not really speak one word at a time. We break the flow of words into chunks. And we do not do this randomly, simply to take a breath now and then. We insert pauses to break the flow into meaningful chunks. We do not say