Everything You Wanted to Know about Conference Proposals in 60 Minutes or Less (Okay, Not Really)

1. Everything You Wanted to Know about Conference Proposals in 60 Minutes or Less(Okay, Not Really) Featuring: Faber, Brenton. "Rhetoric in Competition: The Formation of Organizational Discourse in Conference on College Composition and Communication Abstracts." Written Communication 13.3 (1996): 355-84. Halleck, Gene B., and Ulla M. Connor. "Rhetorical Moves in TESOL Conference Proposals." Journal of English for Academic Proposals 5.1 (2006): 70-86.

2. It’s Just a Conference Proposal, So What? • Halleck and Connor – “[Conference proposals] have the communicative purpose of convincing members of an academic discourse community to approve a request to further knowledge in the field” (p. 72). • Plus – “Because academicians often need to have their work accepted by a conference in order to obtain funding to attend it, and because their acceptance provides them with a public platform from which to introduce their work to their peers, writing successful conference proposals is of the utmost importance” (p. 70) • Faber pretty much says this too – see page 358.

3. Brent Faber – Rhetoric in Competition • Overview • Study of conference proposals submitted to the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) • Successful abstracts are represented by a combination of generic qualities • Abstracts featuring rhetorical features like industry jargon, citations, acronyms, and nominalizations are carriers of insider information and symbols of privileged organizational discourse

4. Gene B. Halleck and Ulla M. Connor – Rhetorical Moves in TESOL Conference Proposals • Overview • Study of proposals submitted to the TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) Conference • Rhetorical moves in each proposal were identified and examined to see which of these elements contributed the most to a successful proposal • Answer: no single one of the moves contributed to a proposal’s success over another; placement of the moves varied depending on the author’s purpose and intent

5. What Do These Articles Tell Us? • If you are looking for a “recipe” for proposal success here, you aren’t going to find it! • The two articles do agree on some things, though…

6. What Do These Articles Tell Us? • Capture the reviewers’ attentions: • Faber – “…high rated CCCC abstracts are able to demonstrate ‘interestingness’ and ‘novelty’ to the reviewer” (p.356). • Halleck and Connor – “Because of their communicative purpose to ‘sell an idea,’ conference abstracts…need to capture the attention of the reader; they need to describe the idea, adjust it to the needs of the readers, and establish the writer’s competence” (p. 72). • We’ll talk a little more about how we might do this in a bit, but first some more commonalities…

7. What Do These Articles Tell Us? • A good proposal is not a guarantee that it will be accepted. Other factors are at play: • Faber – “These ‘other factors’ seem to represent more explicit institutional or organizational concerns, such as the maintenance of an overall balance of topics, the continued representation from particular interests within the field… as well as the program chair’s personal interests” (p. 359). • Halleck and Connor – “The form and content of proposals may not be as important in the raters’ estimation as other factors such as interest in the topic or the conference chair’s desire to include a representative set of papers” (p. 74).

8. What Do These Articles Tell Us? • But the BIG thing is that most proposals will share many of the same characteristics. • For Faber, these are: • Introduction  Problem  Objectives  Product  Method  Citations • For Halleck and Connor, these are: • Territory  Reporting Previous Research  Gap  Goal  Means 1  Means 2  Outcomes  Benefits (the last two – Importance and Competence claims have been left out of this discussion due to their relatively low representation in the study)

9. Faber Introduction – Establishes the context of the paper Problem – What’s wrong; what makes this project necessary Objectives – Purpose or value of an idea, solution, or problem Product – What the author hopes to accomplish Method – how the research was/will be conducted Citations – What do other conversants say? Halleck and Connor Territory – Establishes the context of the paper Reporting Previous Research – What do other conversants say? Gap – Indicates a lack of knowledge or a problem in the territory Goal – Statement of aim; purpose of the research Means 1 – Methods, plans, or procedures the used to meet the goal of the paper Means 2 - Methods, plans, or procedures to carry out the presentation Outcomes – Describes the anticipated results Benefits – Projected outcomes which could be considered useful to the “real world” outside the study itself, or even outside of the research field What Do These Articles Tell Us?

10. What Do These Articles Tell Us? • Neither study claims to have the definitive answer as to why a proposal gets accepted, but thinking about our research in conjunction with these terms can help us decide what elements to include in our own proposals. Let’s do this now…

11. Activity • Take a few minutes to outline your research project using the following criteria (as seen in these articles) as your guide: • Introduction • Problem • Objectives • Product • Method • Reporting Previous Research • Outcomes • Benefits

12. Now What? • After you outline your project, some tips to help you get accepted: • Capture the reviewer’s interest by conforming to the linguistic standards of your discipline – review journals and published conference proceedings to find linguistic trends (Faber) • Make sure your proposal is as close to the maximum length dictated by the conference call (Halleck and Connor)