Faculty - Maria Brea-Spahn

Voice (615) 494-8886
Fax (615) 898-2815
Email: mbrea@mtsu.edu

Education:

• Ph.D., University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 2009
• M.S., University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 1999
• B.A., University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 1997

Honors:

• New Century Graduate Scholarship  - American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation, 2004
• Magna cum Laude
• Bilingual/biliterate, Spanish-English

Areas of research and teaching:

• Monolingual and bilingual, Spanish-English, speech, language, and literacy development and disorders
• Bilingual assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of literacy disorders (spelling, reading, and writing)
• Cultural influences in the acquisition of language
• Frequency effects in the development of lexical and orthographic knowledge
• Nonword Repetition Performance and Vocabulary Knowledge
• Role of vocabulary depth in the development of reading comprehension
• Role of writing instruction in the development of written discourse skills

Professional Memberships and Certification:

• American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
• ASHA Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech-Language Pathology

Courses taught:

• CDIS 3260  Language Acquisition and Analysis
• CDIS 6000 Speech, Language, and Literacy Development
• LITS 7130 Literacy In Socio-cultural Context