作者简介：

高伦先生出生以及成长在加利福尼亚南部，毕业于加州伯克利大学和台湾大学，主修中国文学、语言学、心理学和历史。

高伦先生在台湾的时候就住在台湾大学对面，他在学校学习了两年中国传统语言和文化，包括中文繁体字和五种拼音法。

他曾经学习了法语、西班牙语以及意大利语，而中文是目前他学过的最难的语言。当他在初中学习西班牙语的时候，学校采用的就是目前中国私立和公立学校都在使用的语言学习方法——死记硬背。最后，他不仅没有学会说西班牙语，而且不得不在失望中放弃了这门语言的学习。他当时就想一定会有一种更好的学习外语的方法的！

就是因为在加州伯克利大学采用一种更“启蒙式”的语言方法，才使得他在20岁的时候就开始学习中文，并且很快就熟练掌握。

事实上，在台湾学习不到一年后，高伦先生参加了当时台湾国家教育部为外国友人举办的演讲比赛。凭借流利精彩的演讲，高伦先生荣获了比赛的第一名，而那时他只在加州伯克利分校学习了两年半的中文，当时使用的就是《魔术工具》教导的学习方法。

高伦先生目前大部分时间居住在中国广东省中山市，期间也会经常出国。

《魔术工具》已被翻译成22种语言，每一个版本都有标准目标语配音，就像鞠萍姐姐为中文版的标准普通话配音。这是第一本即将出版发行的电子版本。下一个电子版本将会带有中文汉字以及注音符号，主要为台湾的学生而设。

Author Introduction:

Lorenzo Hyland was born and raised in southern California. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and the National Taiwan University, majoring in Chinese Literature, linguistics, philosophy, and history.

Mr. Hyland lived in Taiwan right across the street from the National Taiwan University for 2 years learning about traditional Chinese language and culture, including traditional Chinese characters, and 5 different pinyin (transliteration) methods.

He has studied French, Spanish, and Italian, though learning Chinese was by far the most difficult project he had ever undertaken. Back when he was studying Spanish in junior high school, schools still used the same method of language learning which is currently being used in public and private schools in China—rote memorization. He ended up not only not being able to speak Spanish, but he got so depressed that he gave up in disgust. He knew there must be a better way to learn a foreign language!

It was only because UC Berkeley was using a much more “enlightened” method of language learning that he was able to start learning Chinese at 20 years of age, and achieve fluency so quickly.

As a matter of fact, after being in Taiwan for not quite one year, Mr. Hyland participated in the very first National Taiwan Ministry of Education Speech Contest for Foreigners. He received the FIRST PLACE prize for delivering his speech flawlessly after having studied Chinese for only two and a half years at UC Berkeley, using the exact same method which is taught in Magical Tools.

Mr. Hyland currently lives mostly in Zhongshan, Guangdong, China, with frequent trips abroad.

Magical Tools has been translated into 22 different languages, all of which have narrations similar to the one that Big Sister JuPing has done for the Chinese version. However, this is the first electronic version of the book to be published. The next electronic version will be in Chinese Traditional Characters with Zhuyin Fuhao for students in Taiwan.