Click here to read an interview with the authors.

Joan Saslow, Joan Saslow is author of a number of textbook series for adults and young adults, including Ready to Go: Language, Lifeskills, and Civics, a four-level adult ESL series; Workplace Plus: Living and Working in English, a vocational English series; Literacy Plus, a two-level series that teaches literacy, English, and culture to adult pre-literate students; and English in Context: Reading Comprehension for Science and Technology, a three-level series for English for special purposes.

Ms. Saslow was the Series Director of Longman’s popular five-level adult series True Colors: An EFL Course for Real Communication and of True Voices, a five-level EFL video course. Her special interest is in distinguishing the needs of the EFL and the ESL learner and creating materials appropriate to each.

Ms. Saslow has taught in Chile and the United States in a variety of programs. In Chile, she taught English and French at the Binational Centers of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, and at the Catholic University of Valparaíso. In the United States, Ms. Saslow has taught English as a Foreign Language to Japanese university students and at Marymount College's intensive English program as well as workplace English at General Motors auto assembly plant, both in Tarrytown, New York. Ms. Saslow is also an editor, a teacher-trainer, a language learner, and a frequent speaker at gatherings of English teachers throughout the world. She has an M.A. in French from the University of Wisconsin.

Allen Ascher , formerly Director of the International English Language Institute at Hunter College, has been a teacher, a teacher-trainer, an author, and a publisher. He has taught in language and teacher-training programs in both China and the United States. Mr. Ascher specialized in teaching listening and speaking to students at the Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute, to hotel workers at a major international hotel in China, and to Japanese students from Chubu University studying English at Ohio University. In New York, Mr. Ascher taught students of all language backgrounds and abilities at the City University of New York, and he trained teachers in the TESOL Certificate Program at the New School. Mr. Ascher has an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Ohio University.

Mr. Ascher is author of the popular Think about Editing: A Grammar Editing Guide for ESL Writers. As a publisher, Mr. Ascher played a key role in the creation of some of the most widely used materials for adults, including: True Colors, NorthStar, Focus on Grammar, Global Links, and Ready to Go. He has provided lively workshops for EFL teachers throughout Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.