About the Authors Yan Shen has been a lecturer in Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA, Los Angeles since 2005. She has a Masters in Sinology and Anthropology from University Trier, Trier, Germany and a Bacherlors in Chinese Language and Literature from Capital Normal University, Beijing, China. She was born in China and has lived in Beijing for more than two decades. She taught Chinese as a second language at the International Chinese Language and Culture Center, Tsinghua University, China, during 1993 and 2004. She has been a certified Oral Proficiency Tester for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages since 2012. She has written numerous articles for journals and speaks regularly at national and global conferences. She has served as a reviewer for the Critical Language Scholarship Program (Chinese) for several years. Joanne Shang teaches Mandarin Chinese at Rye Country Day School in New York and is professionally focused in student-centered pedagogy and technology integration in world language teaching and learning.

She is a master teacher in Startalk programs and presents regularly at national and global conferences. Joanne previously taught in North Carolina and Hong Kong. About the Publisher Many great things begin with a tiny spark, and for Manuel H. Barron that spark came from a mimeograph machine in the basement of his Brooklyn, NY, bookstore in the late 1930s. People from the community asked Mr. Barron for books to help their children study for the New York State Regents exams. After realizing there wasn't anything available, Mr. Barron created his own study guides.

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