Dr Virginie Pignot-Shahov BA, PGCE, FHEA, PhD
Teaching Fellow

Dr Virginie Pignot-Shahov, Teaching Fellow in Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Southampton.
I studied English Language and Linguistics at the University of Westminster in London before completing a PGCE (French and Spanish) at the University of Portsmouth in 2005. I then taught A-level and IB French and Spanish for six years. In 2011, I joined the IWLP department at Reading University where I taught French. That same year, I also became a French tutor at the University of Southampton before taking on my current position as a Teaching Fellow.
In 2018, I completed a PhD in linguistics under the supervision of Prof Ros Mitchell. My thesis was an empirical study of L2 French vocabulary development over the three years of a language undergraduate degree in the UK, examining this development with reference to vocabulary known at different levels of frequency in French and the extent to which motivation, L2 proficiency and L2 exposure might explain L2 vocabulary variation.