In the past 20 years or so， enormous efforts have been made by the Chinese educational authorities to help English teachers with their professional development.Various programs have been proposed and launched to help improve English teachers' language proficiency， cross-cultural awareness in teaching， to inform them of new developments in language teaching research and to train them in using information technologies in language teaching. While all this has been very useful in raising the overall qualifications ofschool teachers， there are still pressing demands for more up-to-date ideas and practical methods for teachers to adopt or adapt in their classrooms， especially in the face of the new and challenging task of understanding and implementing the new curriculum standards for senior high schools issued by the Ministry ofEducation in 2017.To provide teachers with up-to-date and authoritative guides to latest ideas and methods in language teaching， we have invited some world leading scholars in second language learning and teaching， Rod Ellis，Brian Tomlinson， to name just a few， to reorganize and present their research findings and recent thoughts on language teaching and research in a way more easily accessible to school teachers in China. Topics will range from task-based language teaching， course design， cross-cultural communication， activities and feedback in the classroom， material development， to learning assessment and evaluation， IT in language teaching， etc. It is hoped the book series can be used separately by teachers and schools who are interested in particular topics or collectively on a teacher training program. Hopefully， they can also serve as extra-curriculum readings for future language teachers in normal universities.Language is a complex cognitive and social activity. Language teaching will surely become more effective and efficient when both teachers and educational administrators have a better understanding of the nature of language and language learning and the various factors that need to be considered when implementing language teaching.