Chantal Peron Thompson is a native of Quimper, France. She graduated valedictorian from one of the largest high schools in France (le Lycee de Kerichen a Brest) and developed a love of writing under the spell of the wind-swept coast of Brittany. At age sixteen, she was National Champion of France in the long jump. She went on to attend the University of Rennes and came to the United States to perfect her English and attend graduate school. She ended up getting married and staying! She has been on the faculty at Brigham Young University since 1973 and has earned many teaching awards. The latest is a distinguished University Professorship (1998-2008). She founded the African Studies Program at Brigham Young University and has taken several groups of students to Senegal. She currently directs first-year French courses and trains and supervises a team of fifteen to eighteen student instructors each semester. Thompson is a certified ACTFL Tester and Trainer and conducts workshops worldwide on teaching and testing for proficiency. Her speaking engagements have included keynote addresses at major conferences from Salem, Oregon, to Bangkok, Thailand. She has also presented a series of ACTFL webinars (March-April 2011). Thompson is the primary author of MAIS OUI! a first-year French text (Houghton Mifflin/Cengage Learning 1996, 2000, 2004, 2009, 2012); ENSUITE, a second-year text (McGraw-Hill, 1989, 1993, 1998, 2003); and MOMENTS LITTERAIRES, a literary anthology for intermediate-level courses (Heinle/Cengage Learning, 1992, 2006). Elaine M. Phillips has an M.A. in French literature and a Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education from the University of Texas at Austin. Her career in foreign language education spans more than thirty years including teaching French in an American high school in Germany and in college and junior college in Texas. She also supervised and taught methods courses for student teachers and graduate courses in Foreign Language Education at UT Austin. Her previous experience as director of the LOTE Center for Educator Development focused on foreign language standards implementation and professional development for in-service teachers. She served as Project Director for the 2007 Texas Language Summit, which assessed economic, social, and cultural imperatives for language competency in Texas for the National Security Education Program, co-authoring LANGUAGE ROADMAP FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: TEXAS. Phillips is currently a language education and evaluation consultant.
