WRTG 293 students, Your last writing assignment will be a report on a professional organization in your field. In this assignment, you will conduct research on your field of study in order to become more aware of the professional contacts, organizations, employment opportunities, and trends in the field. Steps to Take in Completing this Assignment  Locate at least one professional organization in the field or profession that you plan to pursue. One way to locate an organization of this nature is to conduct an advanced search on Google. For example, the following screen capture shows a student searching for professional organizations in cybersecurity. Please note that a professional organization is a voluntary. member-based organization. A training workshop offered by a company is not a professional organization event. For example, if Cisco offers training workshops and identifies the training workshop as a conference, that event is actually not a conference offered through a professional organization. It is a conference offered through a private company.  Find out what annual or regularly scheduled conferences the organization coordinates. For example, in the field of cybersecurity, the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy sponsors the following conference:  Complete a report on your findings. Your report will feature the following headings o Professional Organization o Description of Conference o Personal Applications Information Under Each Heading: Professional Organization After you have located an organization related to your field of study, peruse that organization’s website. Browse the details on that organization. You might indicate when it started, how large it is, who is eligible to join, and what its mission statement is, for example. Usually the major organizations will have websites with this information. Remember that if you are copying any information, such as the mission statement, you must document it with internal and end documentation using APA format. Description of Conference Research one of the conferences held by the organization. Some organizations will have one large conference annually (such as the Children's Literature Association), some will have two or more large ones based on membership interests (such as the National Conference of Teachers of English with its annual conference that focuses on elementary through secondary education and its College Composition and Communication Conference that attracts many thousands of college writing teachers). Some organizations may instead offer several regional conferences; the Association of Business Communication, for instance, tends to hold several smaller regional conferences in different parts of the United States each year, with its one major conference being held in a different country each year. Try to determine what the most important conference is for your particular interests. The organization website will almost certainly provide this information. Provide details about the organization's conferences, including time, size, and location. Then search for information from the organization’s latest conference. If you cannot find this information, you may use information from a conference from a previous year or, if necessary, information for the organization’s upcoming conference. Once you have located a suitable conference, peruse the topics that were or will be covered at the conference by looking at the Call for Papers or the Report on Presentations. In this section, you will find a list of perhaps 20-30 topics on which the organization is accepting papers for presentations or, for a conference that has already taken place, topics on which participants presented. Select three topics of interest to you. In addition, examine the theme or title of the conference. From the information you have gathered on the presentations and the overall theme or title, write a paragraph on what the most important or interesting topics are in your field right now. This information will be based on what is covered at the conference. The following are some examples of this process:  At the most recent Children's Literature Conference, the theme was digital texts, so there were many presentations on graphic novels and children's movies. Some of the most important talks were on the ways that graphic novels include complexity via the graphic elements and on the way that "comic book" style texts are moving their way into the picture book field, with discussions about how that affects the way children learn to interpret books.  At the most recent Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Conference, TESOL 2017, the title was “TESOL 2.0: Engage, Enrich, Empower.” The plenary speakers for the conference talked about topics such as the challenges in a hightechnology, non-traditional, 2.0 world amidst the reduction of resources for teaching English in this environment and how education operates in a world of “smart machines.” The TESOL organization and conference is divided into many interest sections, including adult education, higher education, elementary education, computer-assisted language learning (CALL), and second language writing, among others. The conference website and program offer insights on new trends in teaching pronunciation, in teaching writing, and in teaching adults. A report on the TESOL Convention would include trends in the teaching of pronunciation, trends in the teaching of writing to college students for whom English is not a first language, trends in teaching ESL to adults, or trends in another area. The goal for this section of your report is to help you become aware of the topics that people are exploring at this time. These topics will impact your field of study in upcoming years. Personal Applications In this last section, you will describe what you have learned about your field from this exercise and how the information might help your job search or your progress in your career. Ideally, the report on the professional organization will give you some good ideas about professional development in your field. Length of your paper: Your report should be 800-1200 words. Due Date: Your instructor will notify you of the due date. You will write a first draft, your instructor will comment on the first draft, and you will submit a second draft using the comments as your guide. The conference I am interested in is the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) conference. I am majoring in English at the University of Maryland University College. My goal is to become an instructor of English as a Second Language. I might want to teach in a middle school or high school. I am also open to teaching in a private school as well. I am interested in the TESOL organization and conference because they offer manifold opportunities to learn about a variety of skills and interest groups within the English as a Second Language field. The TESOL conference also provides avenues to job opportunities. TESOL sponsors the conference each year in the spring. The next conference, TESOL 2017, will be held March 21-24 in Seattle, Washington. (TESOL 2017 International Convention & English Language Expo, 2016). The TESOL 2017 conference has over 800 concurrent sessions planned. Areas that I am interested in that are being presented on at the conference include instruction in pronunciation and feedback to students on their writing. Specifically with regard to pronunciation, concurrent sessions cover issues such as anxiety among international graduate students because of pronunciation challenges, singing activities that are designed to improve pronunciation, online courses for training pronunciation teachers, project-based pronunciation practice, and integrating Reader’s Theater into a pronunciation class (TESOL 2017 Accepted Proposals, 2016). I highlighted these sessions because they feature innovative methods of teaching pronunciation. For example, I had never thought of singing as a way of teaching students how to pronounce words and phrases correctly. Moreover, I have never considered the possibility of an online course for teaching pronunciation. Finally, a project-based course in teaching pronunciation means that students complete a project and, through, their efforts, improve their pronunciation. I am very intrigued by such an approach. One session in particular that intrigued me is called “Essentials in Haptic Pronunciation Teaching.” I was not at all clear what the term haptic meant. In looking it up, I found the website of the presenter, Michael Burri. Burri explains that haptic-integrated pronunciation instruction involves a kinesthetic approach to teaching pronunciation (Burri, 2014). He notes that approach involves movement and touch and is “applicable to high beginning language learners and above.” I had never considered pronunciation and physical movement to be related. In terms of providing feedback to students on their writing, some concurrent sessions include indirect feedback to students on their writing, written comments on students’ writing and how students and teachers view them, electronic feedback in course chats, and simultaneous oral-written feedback (SOWF). I was not familiar with indirect feedback or with SOWF. In looking up indirect feedback, I found that, when using direct feedback, the teacher often corrects an error. However, when using indirect feedback, the teacher might circle the error and mention that it is an error. The teacher then expects the student to correct the error. I have worked informally with people whose first language was not English to help them with their writing. In doing so, I have always simply told them what was wrong with their words and sentences. I have never considered anything like indirect feedback. I found that simultaneous oral-written feedback (SOWF) refers to a method of providing feedback in which the instructor meets with the student and marks up the paper while talking over the paper with the student (Hu, J., 2016). In other words, the teacher does not mark up the paper first and then meet with the student to discuss the marks. The teacher meets with the student with the paper unmarked and talks through the marks as he or she writes on the paper. I have never considered whether feedback had to be concurrent with speaking to the student. Overall, while I have extensive experience in helping non-native speakers and writers of English improve both their oral and written fluency, perusing the TESOL 2017 website and concurrent sessions exposed me to concepts and developments in the field that I was not aware of. While I don’t have the time or money to go to TESOL 2017 in March, I do plan on becoming a member of TESOL and taking advantage of its resources. References Burri, Michael (2014). What is haptic pronunciation teaching? Retrieved from http://michaelburri.weebly.com/blog/what-is-haptic-pronunciation-teaching Hu, J. (2016). Simultaneous oral-written feedback on ESL academic writing through conferencing. Retrieved from https://learningatinterculturalinte2015.sched.org/event/2KkW/simultaneous-oral-writtenfeedback-on-esl-academic-writing-through-conferencing TESOL 2017 international convention & English language expo. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.tesol.org/convention2017 TESOL 2017 accepted proposals. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.tesol.org/convention2017/education-sessions/speaker-presenter-information
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