Dr. Melissa Baralt began her career as a primary school teacher in Maracaibo, Venezuela. She then attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., to study how the brain acquires language and what teachers, caregivers, and parents can do to maximize the language learning process. At FIU, Dr. Baralt serves in two key roles: language teacher educator and psycholinguistics researcher. At the Center for Children and Families, Dr. Baralt’s funded studies explore the relationship between language and health. A primary focus of her research is how bilingualism helps children born prematurely. She and her team collaborate with FIU’s Department of Biomedical Engineering to use functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to study the neural recruitment of executive functioning in preterm-born children exposed to different language environments. Dr. Baralt also conducts research on language development in young children, with a particular emphasis on bilingual language development. In May 2017, she and her team were announced as winners of the United States Federal Challenge, funded by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB). Their free mobile app, Háblame Bebé, coaches parents on how and why to raise their children as bilinguals, promotes Spanish language use, and fosters caregiver pride in Hispanic bilingual identity. Dr. Baralt is also involved with Reach Out and Read, collaborating with pediatricians to promote bilingual early literacy and caregiver-child interaction in healthcare settings. Through this partnership, she helps integrate language development strategies into well-child visits, with a focus on supporting and celebrating minoritized families. Her research and community partnerships aim to ensure that all children are prepared for kindergarten and lifelong learning.
Research Areas
- Psycholinguistics
- Bilingualism and second language acquisition
- Bilingual language development in children
- Sociocultural and environmental factors that affect parent-child interaction
- Bilingual education; classroom vs. online language learning
- Methodologies of language teaching
- Language teacher education and cognition
Education
- PhD in Applied Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (awarded with distinction)
- MS in Applied Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
- BA in Spanish Linguistics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia