Dr. Melisa Dracos
Associate Professor Interim Undergraduate Program Director for Linguistics

Interests
Second Language Acquisition
Child language development
Heritage language acquisition
Bilingualism
Morphosyntax
Psycholinguistics
Spanish Linguistics
Education
Ph.D. The Pennsylvania State University (Hispanic Linguistics and Language Science; option - Applied Linguistics)
M.A. The Pennsylvania State University (Hispanic Linguistics)
M.A. Stony Brook University (Hispanic Languages and Literature)
B.A. Baylor University (Spanish, English)
Courses Taught
- LING 3310: Introduction to Linguistics
- LING 4303: Contemporary Syntax
- LING 4313: Child Language Acquisition
- LING 4303: Second Language Acquisition
- LING 4318: Psycholinguistics
Selected Recent Publications
- Dracos, Melisa, & Henry, Nick. (2021). The Role of Task-Essential Training and Working Memory in Offline and Online Morphological Processing. Languages, 6(1), 1-31.
- Requena, Pablo E., and Dracos, Melisa. (2020). Spanish copula selection with adjectives in school-aged bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism. Advance online publication.
- Dracos, Melisa, Requena, Pablo E., & Miller, Karen. (2019). Acquisition of mood selection in Spanish-speaking Children. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Language Development, 26(1), 106-118.
- Seibert Hanson, Aroline E., and Dracos, Melisa (2019). The digital dilemma: L1 and L2 technology use, language learning, and motivation among US university students studying abroad. Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education, 4(2), 224-251.
- Dracos, Melisa, & Henry, Nick. (2018). The effects of task-essential training on L2 processing strategies and the development of Spanish verbal morphology. Foreign Language Annals 51(2), 344-368.
- Requena, Pablo E. & Dracos, Melisa. (2018). Impermeability of L1 syntax: Spanish variable clitic placement in bilingual children. In: Bertolini, A.B. & M.J. Kaplan. Proceedings of the 42nd Boston University Conference on Language Development. (Volume 2) pp. 644-658. Somerville, MA. Cascadilla.
- Dracos, Melisa. (2018). Teacher Talk and Spanish Subject Personal Pronouns. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching 5(1), 1-15.