John McMinn teaches both Spanish and French at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas. He graduated with his Masters degree in Romance Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981, and while pursuing doctoral studies there, he began working as an editor of Spanish and French textbooks at Holt, Rinehart and Winston and Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich publishers. He has worked as an editor on numerous texts, and in addition to Trato hecho and Hoy día:  Spanish for Real Life, he is the co-author of the secondary-level Spanish program Exprésate, as well as the college-level French texts Horizons and Qu'est-ce qu'on dit?   Nuria Alonso García is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Providence College Department of Foreign Language Studies, where she teaches courses in Spanish language and culture, linguistics, language methodology and global studies. She graduated from the Universidad de Oviedo, Spain, with a degree in Spanish Philology, and holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid. She has published various articles in sociolinguistics, and authored a number of pedagogical materials for foreign languages. She is a co-author of Trato hecho, and Hoy día: Spanish for Real Life published by Pearson-Prentice Hall.