WHITWELL WIRSING

Whit Wirsing is a native of Roanoke, Virginia, where he graduated from Patrick Henry High School. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. As a student at Virginia Tech, Whit worked as a cub reporter for The Roanoke World-News during the summers and as Virginia Tech campus correspondent for The Roanoke Times. On graduation he worked as a reporter for The Knoxville News-Sentinel, where he enjoyed covering medicine and science and interviewing famous people. After a decade in journalism, he decided to shift gears, get a degree in Spanish and teach it. During the transition he obtained his real estate license, sold real estate, painted houses, and taught English as a second language for a year at Harmon Hall in Mexico City. On completing his bachelor's degree in Spanish at the University of Utah, he moved to Valladolid, Spain, where he began work on an English-Spanish phrase dictionary, a project which took eleven-and-a-half years including nearly 18,000 hours at the computer. In 1999 Whit moved from Valladolid to Salamanca and then to Madrid where he was matriculated in the masters program in Spanish at Saint Louis University's Madrid campus. He also taught ESL for three academic years in the Institute of Knowledge Engineering at the Autonomous University of Madrid and in the volunteer program at Saint Louis University's Madrid campus during the same period. A book contract with McGraw-Hill interrupted his graduate studies for more than seven years, but with the publication of The Ultimate Spanish Phrase Finder last summer, he has resumed his graduate studies and plans to study this summer in Madrid. Besides Spanish-language literature, Whit has a great interest in lexicography and linguistics, particularly the study of the bilingual and multilingual mental dictionaries.

WHITWELL WIRSING is currently teaching:

WHITWELL WIRSING has previously taught:

• Skill Building Listening Speak
• Skill Building Reading I
• Skill Building Reading II
• Introduction to Writing