Jessica Vélez Avilés

Jessica Vélez Avilés is a graduate student in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at Penn State University, where she specializes in Hispanic Linguistics. She earned her B.A. in Spanish Education from the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras. Jessica also completed an M.A. in General Linguistics in the same institution. Her research interests include bilingualism, Spanish-English code-switching, psycholinguistics, second language acquisition, and language contact. Ongoing research includes bilingual language acquisition and processing, and quantitative analyses of Puerto Rican code-switched data from oral, written, and comprehension (eye-tracking) tasks. Her interests have revolved around bilingualism and Spanish-English code-switching, so, here at Penn State, she plans to further study this topic integrating psycholinguistic methods that allow her to better understand the mental processes underlying bilingual ability. Jessica spends her free time enjoying the simple pleasures of everyday life, like reading a novel, taking a walk, or having a good conversation with a friend.

Awards

• National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award (NSF DDRI)