About the Authors

Graziana Lazzarino is Professor of Italian at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a native of Genoa, received her Laurea from the University of Genoa, and has taught at various European schools and American colleges and universities. She is also the author of Prego! An Invitation to Italian, Da capo: A Review of Grammar, and Per tutti i gusti.

Maria Cristina Peccianti, a native of Siena, received her Laurea from the University of Florence. She is currently teaching Italian as a second language at the University of Siena. She has been involved with the Scientific Technical Committee, promoting teaching methodology to Italian instructors both in Italy and abroad. She has also planned and directed distance learning courses in Latin America and Spain. She was the supervisor of a research and planning group for the Certification of Italian as a second language at the University of Siena. She is the author and editor of books on linguistic education for the different levels of the Italian school system, as well as the author of several articles and essays on programming, examination, and assessment in educational materials. She has also authored several texts for the teaching of Italian as a second language, both for children and adults, including Grammatica d'uso della lingua italiana (Giunti, Firenze, 1997). She was a co-author on the fifth edition of Prego! An Invitation to Italian.

Janice M. Aski received her Ph.D. in Italian from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1997. Her research is in pedagogy and Foreign Language teaching methodology, as well as Romance linguistics and, more specifically, Italian historical phonology. She was a lecturer at Emory University for a number of years. She is presently an Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Italian at The Ohio State University where she coordinates the Italian language program. She was a co-author on the fifth edition of Prego! An Invitation to Italian.

Andrea Dini, a native of Prato, received his Laurea cum laude in Letters form the University of Florence and his Ph.D. in Italian Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a minor in Second-Language Acquisition. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Colorado, the University of Oregon, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Italian at Hofstra University in New York. His areas of specialization include Medieval and Contemporary Italian Literature, and Pedagogy. He is interested in modern rewritings of Dante and Boccaccio and interdisciplinary criticism on the relationship between literature and space. He has published in Studi italiani, Paragone, and he is completing a monograph on Italo Calvino. He was a co-author on the fifth edition of Prego! An Invitation to Italian.