Dr. Kristen Michelson

Associate Professor of French & Applied Linguistics

Office: CMLL 249
CV
kristen.michelson@ttu.edu

Website: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kristen_Michelson

Education

• Ph.D., University of Arizona, 2015
• M.A., French, University of Minnesota
• B.A., Wittenberg University

Dr. Kristen Michelson is Associate Professor of French and Applied Linguistics in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Texas Tech University, where she also directs the first- and second-year language program in French. 

Her research is anchored in intersections between human action and experience and cultural texts, with a particular focus on pedagogical and technological innovations in foreign language teaching and learning that call explicit attention to culture, affect, identities, and ideological discourses. She has explored global simulation frameworks as a way to foster multiliteracies, examined how foreign language teachers co-construct knowledge through digital social annotated reading, and investigated how second language learners of French interpret everyday internet texts. In this latter work, she has employed various methodologies in solo and collaborative research projects, including digital social annotated reading and prompted think-alouds. Her work aims to raise awareness of how particular representational choices are made with agency and intention against a backdrop of broader social contexts, and to provide opportunities for second language learners to understand and participate flexibly in cultural discourses of target language cultures.

She is currently co-PI on two externally funded projects: "Critical Competencies and Advanced French Studies: A Toolkit for Collegiate Educators and Advisors" (with Heather Allen) supported by the FACE Foundation - French in Higher Education’s Empowering French and Francophone Studies grant (2023-2024), and Multiliteracies core practices (with Bruna Sommer-Farias), funded by the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language, and Literacy (CERCLL), a Title VI National Language Resource Center (2024-2026). This latter project involves convening a professional learning circle that is working toward creating a web-based OER repository of teaching videos showcasing multiliteracies pedagogies.

Dr. Michelson is a member of the Texas Tech University Teaching Academy. In her courses, students can expect to be challenged to reflect on biases and beliefs and to learn through collaborative, discovery-oriented activities.

Areas of Research

• Multiliteracies approaches to L2 teaching and learning
• L2 reading in digital environments
• Multimodal L2 reading
• Digital social annotated reading
• Social semiotic approaches to intercultural communication
• Teacher professional development

Courses taught

Graduate:

• LING 5383    Seminar in L2 Research: The Ethics and Affordances of Artificial Intelligence in Applied Linguistics
• LING 5312    Linguistics for Second Language Educators
• CMLL 5305   L2 Literacies
• LING 5322    Theoretical & Research Foundations of L2 Teaching
• LING 5382    Seminar in L2 Instruction: Reading and Interpreting L2 texts
• LING 5330    Introduction to Second Language Acquisition
• LING 5325    Technology in Teaching Second Languages

Undergraduate:

• FREN 3304   Comprehensive Grammar Review
• FREN 4302   Advanced Grammar and Composition

Research

In press

Michelson, K. (in press). Reading between the signs: A qualitative think-aloud study of L2 learners’ meaning construction around a multimodal web text. Reading Research Quarterly.

Michelson, K. (in press). Generative AI for L2 materials: Disruptor or perpetuator of the status quo? L2 Journal.

Co-edited books and volumes

Thoms, J. & Michelson, K. (Eds.). (2024) Second Language Digital Social Reading: Multiliteracies & Sociocultural Perspectives. John Benjamins.

Dupuy, B. & Michelson, K. (Eds.). (2021). Pathways to Paradigm Change: Critical Examinations of Prevailing Discourses and Ideologies in Second Language Education. Cengage Learning.

Warner, C. & Michelson, K. (Eds.). (2018). Living Literacies: L2 Learning, Textuality, and Social Life. Special Issue of L2 Journal, 10(2).

Peer reviewed articles and chapters

Michelson, K. (2024). Rethinking assessment in foreign language teaching: Fostering semiotic agency through multiliteracies approaches. In Empowering language learners in a changing world through pedagogies of multiliteracies (pp. 61-78). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

Michelson, K., Abdennebi, M., & Michelson, C. (2023). Text-centered “talk” in FL classrooms: Comparing the affordances of face to face and digital social annotated reading. Foreign Language Annals, 56(3), 600-626. 

Álvarez Valencia, J. A. & Michelson, K. (2 May 2022, online). A design perspective on intercultural communication in second/foreign language education.Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 16(4), 399-418. 

Michelson, K., & Anderson, A. (2022). Ideological views of reading in contemporary commercial French textbooks: A content analysis.Second Language Research and Practice, 3(1), 34-61. 

Michelson, K., Lee, J.F., & Abdennebi, M. (8 June 2022, online). Textual thinking as evidenced through think alouds: L2 multimodal reading through multiliteracies frameworks.Language Teaching Research. 

Dupuy, B. & Michelson, K. (2021). Introduction. Shifting paradigms: Reshaping discourse and practice for a more situated approach to second language education. In B. Dupuy & K. Michelson (Eds.), AAUSC 2019 Volume: Pathways to Paradigm Change: Critical Examinations of Prevailing Discourses and Ideologies in Second Language Education (pp. 1-8). Cengage. 

Michelson, K. (2019). Global Simulation as a mediating tool for teaching and learning language and culture as discourse.Foreign Language Annals, 52(2), 284–313. 

Michelson, K. & Dupuy, B. (18 September 2018). Teacher learning under co-construction: Affordances of digital social annotated reading.Apprentissage des langues et systèmes d'information et de communication, Alsic [En ligne], 21.

Warner, C. & Michelson, K. (2018). Introduction to the special issue: Living Literacies: L2 Learning, Textuality and Social Life.L2 Journal, 10(2), 3-15. 

Michelson, K. (2018). Teaching culture as a relational process through a Multiliteracies-based Global Simulation.Language, Culture and Curriculum, 31(1), 1-20. 

Michelson, K. & Petit, E. (2017). Becoming social actors: Designing a Global Simulation curriculum for situated language and culture learning. In S. Dubreil & S. Thorne (Eds.), Engaging the world: Social pedagogies and language learning (138-167). Boston: Cengage. 

Michelson, K. & Álvarez Valencia, J.A. (2016). Study Abroad: tourism or education? A multimodal social semiotic analysis of institutional discourses of a promotional website.Discourse & Communication, 10(3), 235-256. 

Michelson, K. & Dupuy, B. (2014). Multi-storied lives: Global Simulation as an approach to developing multiliteracies in an intermediate French course.L2 Journal, 6(1), 21-49. 

Waugh, L.R., Alvarez, J.A., Do, T.H., Michelson, K., & Thomas, M. (2013). Meaning in Texts and Contexts. In K. Allen (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics (pp. 613-634). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Book reviews

Michelson, K. (2017). [Review of Second-language discourse in the digital world: Linguistic and social practices in and beyond the networked classroom, I. Vandergriff, 2016]. Language Learning and Technology, 21(2), 22-26. 

Michelson, K. (2013). [Review of the book Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach, R. Scollon, S. Scollon, and R. Jones, 2012]. Available from Linguist List: 

Webinars

Michelson, K. (2026, January 23).  [Invited webinar]. Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL), University of Arizona.

Link to overview:Webinar Series on Integrating AI in Language Education 
Link to recording (forthcoming): The Promises and Perils of Generative AI for Second Language Literacy Development: The Case of Reading
 

Michelson, K. (2021, April 7). Reading multimodally: Guiding L2 learners to interpret everyday web texts [Invited webinar]. Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL), University of Arizona.

Link to overview:Multi-Modal Literacies and Intercultural Communication in the L2 Classroom
Link to recording:Reading Multimodally: Guiding L2 Learners to Interpret Everyday Web Texts