Monica D. Clyde is a native of Düsseldorf. She received her Ph.D. in German literature from the University of California at Berkeley. She has taught German language and literature at Mills College, Cañada College, the Defense Language Institute, and the College of San Mateo. She was Director of Faculty Development and Scholarship at Saint Mary's College of California until her retirement in 2003. She coauthored Texte und Kontexte and was contributor to Mosaik: Deutsch Kultur und Luteratur, Third Edition, both intermediate college-level German textbooks.

Robert Di Donato is Professor of German and Chair of the Department of German, Russian, and East Asian Languages with Hebrew and Arabic at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. He is the chief academic and series developer of Fokus Deutsch, a telecourse with accompanying texts and materials for teaching and learning German, and coauthor of The Big Yellow Book of German Verbs. He has also edited two volumes for the Central States Conference, written articles aout language methodology, and has given numerous keynote speeches, workshops and presentations - both in the United States and abroad - on teaching methods and teacher education. He has won a number of awards for his work in language education, including the Florence Steiner Award for Leadership in Foreign Language Education.