Brief Biography
Crystal Bock Thiessen graduated with Bachelor’s degrees in both Photography and Spanish, and received her Master’s in TESL from the University of Central Missouri, USA where she eventually worked with the Intensive English Program (IEP) for a year and a half. She taught EFL in Sapporo, Japan for three years, and in Lugansk, Ukraine for one as an English Language Fellow in conjunction with Georgetown University and the U.S. Department of State. She has worked as an English Language Specialist with an emphasis on team-teaching, photography and video for the language classroom, language-learning through community engagement, and team teaching in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Currently, she is an ESL instructor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA and is the president of the Lincoln Council for International Visitors. Besides teaching, she is a professional photographer and, combined with her love of travel, has photographed and visited 46 countries and 29 U.S. states.
Research Interests
English as a second language/language acquisition
Technology for language learning
Socio-cultural experiences of international students on American campuses
Publications & Conference Presentations
Bock Thiessen, C. (2019, Mar. 15). Teaching Lower Level Research and Presentation Skills by Creating Infographics. Presentation, International TESOL Convention, Atlanta, GA, March 12-15, 2019.
Bock Thiessen, C (2019). Promoting Your Department and Practice with Twitter. Issues in Language Instruction. The University of Kansas: Lawrence, KS.
Bock Thiessen, C. (2018, March 29). More than words: Language teaching and learning with Infographics. Presentation, International TESOL Convention, Chicago, IL.
Bock Thiessen, C. (2018, November). Infographics for language teaching and learning. TESOL Connections. Retrieved from: http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolc/issues/2018-10-01/2.html
Bock Thiessen, C. (2017, August). Photography in ELT: Engage, Inspire, Create, Learn. TESOL Video News. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/juVk4w
Bock Thiessen, C. (2017, March 29). Photography in ELT: Engage, Inspire, Create, Learn [Webinar]. In American English Webinar Series. Retrieved from https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/american-english-webinars
Bock Thiessen, C., Judkins, B., Linzell, C., Mackiewicz, K., Williams, M. (2017). Discussing language teacher identity in community and practice. Presentation, MidTESOL Conference, Kansas City, MO.
Bock Thiessen, C. (2017). Weekly Worldly Warmup. In J. Arnold and E. Herrick (Eds.). New ways in teaching with music (pp. 207- 209). New ways in TESOL series. Alexandria, Virginia: TESOL International Association.
Bock Thiessen, C. (2016). Effective Error Engagement in Academic ESL Writing. In T. Tran (Ed.). The MIDTESOL Conference Proceedings. The future is now: Building new traditions in TESOL(pp. 36-49). Mid-America Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/VukfSy