chunking

This is a very important idea when teaching and learning English:

ChunksWhen we speak and write, we repeat a lot of phrases and clauses, such as on the other hand, a lot of, at the moment, you know, you see, I mean. Some of these phrases, or chunks of language, are very common and they have specific meanings. …

Chunks in speakingWe use chunks like you know, you know what I mean, I know what you’re saying to check and show understanding between speaker and listener:…

 

Chunks in writingWe use many chunks in writing. They help us to structure what we write: …

chunk Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary

It's the 'Lexical Approach':
Humanising Language Teaching Magazine for teachers and teacher trainers

Here's a good overview of the idea:
Language as Chunks, not Words

And here's another:

chunk 

(language acquisition)

By Richard Nordquist

Updated February 01, 2015.

Definition:

In studies of language acquisition, several words that are customarily used together in a fixed expression, such as "in my opinion," "to make a long story short," "How are you?" or "Know what I mean?"

Chunk and chunking were introduced as cognitive terms by psychologist George A. Miller in his paper "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" (1956).

See Examples and Observations, below. Also see:

• Lexical Approach
• Binomial
• Cliché
• Collocation
• Compound Noun
• Idiom
• Language Acquisition
• Listeme
• Pet Phrase
• Phrase

• Phrasal Verb
• Platitude
• Snowclone

Examples and Observations:

• "Here is one that got away, and lived to tell the tale."
  (Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1983, 2009)
• "Oh, by the way, how's the Florence Henderson look working for you?"
  (Matthew Morrison as Will Schuester, "The Power of Madonna." Glee, 2010)

Uses of Prefabricated Chunks
- "It seems that in the initial stages of first language acquisition and natural second language acquisition we acquire unanalysed chunks, but that these gradually get broken down into smaller components . . ..

"The prefabricated chunks are utilised in fluent output, which, as many researchers from different traditions have noted, largely depends on automatic processing of stored units. According to Erman and Warren's (2000) count, about half of running text is covered by such recurrent units."
(J. M. Sinclair and A. Mauranen, Linear Unit Grammar: Integrating Speech and Writing. John Benjamins, 2006)

Formulaic Phrases vs. Literal Expressions

"[T]he formulaic phrase has unique properties: it is cohesive and unitary in structure (sometimes with aberrant grammatical form), often nonliteral or deviant in meaning properties, and usually contains a nuanced meaning that transcends the sum of its (lexical) parts. The canonical form of the expression ('formuleme') is known to native speakers. This is to say that a formulaic expression functions differently in form, meaning, and use from a matched, literal, novel, or propositional expression (Lounsbury, 1963). 'It broke the ice,' for example, as a formula, differs regarding meaning representation, exploitation of lexical items, status in language memory, and range of possible usages, when compared to the exact same sequence of words as a novel expression."
(Diana Van Lancker Sidtis, "Formulaic and Novel Language in a 'Dual Process' Model of Language Competence." Formulaic Language, Vol. 2., ed. by Roberta Corrigan et al. John Benjamins, 2009)

Criticism of the Lexical-Chunk Approach
"Michael Swan, a British writer on language pedagogy, has emerged as a prominent critic of the lexical-chunk approach. Though he acknowledges, as he told me in an e-mail, that 'high-priority chunks need to be taught,' he worries that 'the "new toy" effect can mean that formulaic expressions get more attention than they deserve, and other aspects of language--ordinary vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and skills--get sidelined.'

"Swan also finds it unrealistic to expect that teaching chunks will produce nativelike proficiency in language learners. 'Native English speakers have tens or hundreds of thousands--estimates vary--of these formulae at their command,' he says. 'A student could learn 10 a day for years and still not approach native-speaker competence.'"
(Ben Zimmer, "On Language: Chunking." The New York Times Magazine, Sep. 19, 2010)

Also Known As: language chunk, lexical chunk, praxon, formulated speech, formulaic phrase, formulaic speech, lexical bundle, lexical phrase, collocation

Chunk - Definition and Examples in Language Acquisition

Michael Swan is a sceptic:
Michael Swan | Chunks in the classroom: let’s not go overboard

You can do it in other languages:
Chunking Italian: Linguistic and Task-oriented Evaluation | Stefano Federici - Academia.edu
.
.
.