Author Description

About the Author<br/><br/>Bill VanPatten is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Chanpaign, where he is Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese and the Advisor for the undergraduate program in Spanish teacher education. He received his Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983. His areas of research are input and output processing in second language acquisition, the impact of instruction on second language acquisistion, and the acquisition of Spanish syntax and morphology. He teaches a wide range of courses from beginning Spanish to doctoral seminars on language acquisition. He has published numerous articles and chapters in books and is the co-author of several McGraw-Hill Spanish textbooks. He is also the designer of Destinos, a television course for PBS.<br/><br/>James F. Lee is Professor of Spanish, Director of Language Instruction, and Director of the Programs in Hispanic Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University. His research interests lie in the areas of second language reading comprehension, input processing, and exploring the relationship between the two. His research papers have appeared in a number of scholarly journals and publications. His previous publications include Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen (1995, McGraw-Hill) and several co-edited volumes, including Multiple Perspectives on Form and Meaning, the 1999 volume of the American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators. Dr. Lee is also the author of Tasks and Communicating in Language Classrooms (2000, McGraw-Hill). He has also co-authored several textbooks including ¿Sabías que¿? Beginning Spanish (2000 McGraw-Hill), ¿Qué te parece? Intermediate Spanish (2000, McGraw-Hill) and Ideas: Lecturas, estrategias, actividades y composiciones (1994, McGraw-Hill). He and Bill VanPatten are series editors for the McGraw-Hill Second Lan