[erikb]

Yes, I read that passage too and was actually quite disappointed about it, because it doesn't help you to become an expert. If you think, you learned something out of that phrase, that means you actually "understood" something, but you are still not an "expert" writer.

The thing is, that knowing and understanding the features that discriminate experts from nonexperts doesn't help you much in your desire to become an expert. If you understand these features you can tell more accurately, if you are an expert yourself or not. At best this helps indirectly with telling you how much your learning task is achieved. At worst it just destroys your motivation. The question of how to become an expert is still open, though.