Fabián A. Samaniego earned his B.A. degree at New Mexico State University and completed his graduate work at the University of Iowa. He taught four years at Utah State University before going to the University of California at Davis where he served as Coordinator of the first-year Spanish program and Supervisor of Teaching Assistants for twenty-four years. He also served as Assistant Director of several Foreign Language Competency Projects for the Los Angeles and San Francisco Unified School Districts, and for the Santa Clara and Sacramento County Offices of Education. In addition, he served on the steering committee of the California Foreign Language Teacher Preparation Project and on the California Foreign Language Project Policy Board. He frequently is asked to conduct inservice workshops for schools and universities across the country. Fabián's first-year college text, ?Dámelo t?! is in its fifth edition and he is currently working on a third edition of his second year college text, Mundo 21. He is a co-author of Language and Culture in Learning: Teaching Spanish to Native Speakers of Spanish and of ?DIME!, a seven-book school series which includes a two-year native Spanish Speaker's program: Tu mundo and Nuestro mundo.

Designed for heritage speaker courses in intermediate Spanish, the content-based approach of El mundo 21 hispano provides students with a wealth of opportunities to learn about their own country of origin, or that of their ancestors. As students delve into their roots they learn to respect and take pride in their own cultural heritage as well as those of their classmates.