Contact Information
707 S. Mathews Ave. | MC-176
Urbana, IL 61801
Research Interests
Bilingualism, Psycholinguistics, Spanish as a Heritage Language, L2 Acquisition, Code-Switching.
Research Description
I study how bilingual experience shapes sentence processing in adult heritage speakers of Spanish. Using eye-tracking, I investigate how morphosyntactic cues are used during the reading and comprehension of complex structures in the heritage language, with the premise that experiential factors, such as age of onset of bilingualism and experience with heritage language schooling, influence reading efficiency and interpretation.
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 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