本书是适合所有层次学生的理想教材，包含语言教学的诸多领域，诸如语言学、英语、教育、外国语言、心理学、人类学、社会学以及英语作为第二语言的教学。第八版继承作者始终如一的写作与出版理念，努力做到最前沿、最完整、内容最丰富，除保留面向学生的亲和风格之外，新增了近年来神经语言学的新发展和语言自主性的相关研究，更新了心理语言学的最新发现和计算语言学的有关议题等，反映了语言学领域内最新的研究成果。

This 2006 book was the first handbook where the world's foremost 'experts on expertise' reviewed our scientific knowledge on expertise and expert performance and how experts may differ from non-experts in terms of their development, training, reasoning, knowledge, social support, and innate talent. Methods are described for the study of experts' knowledge and their performance of representative tasks from their domain of expertise. The development of expertise is also studied by retrospective interviews and the daily lives of experts are studied with diaries. In 15 major domains of expertise, the leading researchers summarize our knowledge on the structure and acquisition of expert skill and knowledge and discuss future prospects. General issues that cut across most domains are reviewed in chapters on various aspects of expertise such as general and practical intelligence, differences in brain activity, self-regulated learning, deliberate practice, aging, knowledge management, and creativity.