Contact Information
707 S. Mathews Ave. | MC-176
Urbana, IL 61801
Office Hours
Research Interests
Bilingualism, Psycholinguistics, Spanish as a Heritage Language, L2 Acquisition, Code-Switching.
Research Description
I investigate how bilingual Spanish–English speakers—both heritage speakers and L2 learners—read and interpret Spanish sentences in real time. More specifically, I examine how language experience and (bi)literacy influence the processing of morphosyntactic features such as gender, number, and verbal agreement, as well as the comprehension of complex structures like passive voice and relative clauses.
Education
PhD in Hispanic Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In Progress.
MA in Hispanic Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 2022.
BA in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador, Venezuela. 2017.
Courses Taught
SPAN 101 Elementary Spanish I
SPAN 122 Intensive Elementary Spanish
SPAN 130 Intermediate Spanish
SPAN 142 Spanish in the Professions
SPAN 228 Spanish Composition - Section A For Heritage Speakers
SPAN 307 Bilingualism
SPAN 308 Spanish in the U.S.
External Links
Recent Publications
Melendez, D., Jegerski, J., & Montrul, S. A. (2025). The Role of Determiners in the Processing of Gender Agreement Morphology by Heritage Speakers of Spanish. Languages, 10(9), 202. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages10090202