Bill VanPatten is Professor and Director of Applied Linguistics and Second Language Studies at Texas Tech University. His areas of research are input and input processing in second language acquisition and the effects of formal instruction on acquisitional processes. He has published widely in the fields of second language acquisition and language teaching and is a frequent conference speaker and presenter. His publications include Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen (with James F. Lee, 2003,McGraw-Hill), From Input to Output: A Teacher’s Guide to Second Language Acquisition (2003, McGraw-Hill), Processing Instruction: Theory, Research, and Practice (2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) and most recently, Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An Introduction (with Jessica Williams, 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). He is the lead author of Vistazos, ¿Sabías que...?, Destinos and Sol y viento.
Dr. VanPatten is the 2007 recipient of the Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education, awarded jointly by ACTFL and NYSAFLT.
When not engaged in academic activities, he writes fiction and performs stand-up comedy. He has recently published his first work of fiction, a collection of short stories titled Chicago Tales, published by Outskirts Press (2007).
Martha Alford Marks received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Co-author of ¿Qué tal? and Destinos, a Spanish video course, she also served on the Advisory Board to Boston PBS station WGBH during the development of the Destinos program, which was funded by the Annenberg Foundation. She is widely known as an ACTFL-certified oral proficiency tester and trainer in Spanish and ESL.
Richard V. Teschner received his Ph.D. in 1972 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Spanish Linguistics. He has taught at UW-Parkside, the University of Iowa, and (since 1976) the University of Texas at El Paso, where in 1988 he became a full professor in the Department of Languages and Linguistics. His publications include four edited anthologies, two book-length bibliographies, a placement exam, and a dictionary of Mexican-American Spanish, along with several editions of seven textbooks such as Español escrito: Curso para hispanohablantes bilingües; Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish; and Analyzing the Grammar of English: A Brief Undergraduate Textbook. He has published four dozen articles in professional journals along with an equal number of papers and keynote addresses. In 1988 he served as president of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese and also of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest.
