May 21, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo
It really should not surprise anyone that someone who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., had an interest in languages. After all, Brooklynese is its own special code, spoken by millions.
So, the fact that Matt Rispoli—Illinois professor by way of Marine Park (a neighborhood way at the south end of Flatbush Avenue and home of Nathan’s, Coney Island and Buddy’s Fairyland)—ended up as an academic researcher whose expertise is developmental psycholinguistics makes perfect sense.
Rispoli—who recently retired after four decades in academia—credited his teachers, starting with Judith Marcus, his Spanish teacher at Madison High, and primarily his professors at Hunter College in New York, for influencing his interest in linguistics.
“When I got to Hunter, they had a bunch of great teachers, and I remember them really well,” he said in an accent that gives away his birthplace. “A guy named Robert White, (and also) Tamara Green. They taught Greek and Latin. Best of all was Ralph Ward. The stuff he knew was incredible. I’m lucky I got a chance to study with the guy.
“Those were my influences. Their enthusiasm for language inspired me.”
After graduating from Hunter, Rispoli got his master’s degree in Library Science at Queens College and worked as a librarian for four years in New York, including at the Brooklyn Public Library from 1978-79.
But his love for language kept calling and he answered, receiving a master’s degree in linguistics at Penn. He followed with a Ph.D. in developmental and educational psychology at Teachers College at Columbia University in New York, and then embarked on an academic career that wound from Cal-Berkeley through the Midwest—the University of Kansas, where he met future wife Pamela Hadley, now the department head of the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Illinois—to Oklahoma State, Northern Arizona and Arizona State.
Family reasons brought Rispoli and Hadley to Northern Illinois in 1999, and it wasn’t long before the couple/colleagues ended up in Urbana-Champaign.
“It was only a matter of time before someone at Illinois noticed my wife’s career and said, ‘Gee, we’d love for you to come down here,” said Rispoli, who joined the SHS faculty in 2007 as a visiting assistant professor and became an associate professor in 2017.
“I was delighted to move down to a campus where they actually have a linguistics department and great psychology department, but most of all, a department where we get the brightest kids in the state.”
Hadley and Rispoli have collaborated on dozens of projects and publications and Rispoli enjoyed the work, but at the end of 2022, he felt it was time to step away.
“I’m 70,” he said when asked why he retired.
But he had no desire to sit on his couch all day or go play golf.
“After you retire you begin to say, ‘What can I give back?’ I have the time. I have the passion.”
With that time and passion, Rispoli expanded on the Sentence-Focused Framework project created by him and Hadley. The pair developed the Sentence-Focused Framework to build a bridge between early vocabulary and grammar interventions for toddlers and preschoolers with language disorders.
The Sentence-Focused Framework is an approach to language intervention that helps toddlers produce more diverse simple sentences, Rispoli said.
“Then in retirement, I learned how to animate and create films,” he said. “Now I can actually give expression to these ideas, visualizations that I had while I was lecturing that never came through.”
Rispoli developed a YouTube channel also called the Sentence-Focused Framework, uploading a series of 24 videos that explore language, language development and language intervention. The intended audience is students of language development, parents of young children and professionals involved in early intervention. Rispoli encourages instructors to use the videos in class.
“It (the YouTube channel) really comes off of my experiences teaching (SHS 320) which is language development. In 320, we couldn’t really be sure of the student’s background and how much they understood or knew. We knew we needed to augment. But I never had enough time as an instructor to augment, to really build up the teaching materials
Rispoli sees Sentence-Focused Framework as addition to the college curriculum, and has just finished a website that houses the videos and other tools.
Whatever the future for that project, it’s clear retirement hasn’t slowed Rispoli, who sees it as just another phase of life.
“First chapter I was a librarian,” he said with a laugh. “Second chapter I was a Ph.D. Third chapter I’m an educator of sorts. … who really speaks Adobe Premiere.”
Editor’s note:
To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
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