Migrating (again)

I've decided to integrate my blog into my website, so I'm migrating again. The url for the new blog site is http://www.public.asu.edu/~pmatsuda/blog.html, but you can always find my most current blog site at http://blog.jslw.org/.

New Friends

Years ago, during a conversation with one of the colleagues at my home institution, I sensed a slight difference in how each of us referred to people we meet at academic conferences. I said something like "I really enjoy getting together with friends at those conferences."

"Friends?" she questioned. "You mean, colleagues?"

Well, colleagues, yes. But I'd also consider them my friends.

She then mentioned that she wouldn't consider people at conferences "friends" because friends wouldn't be able to critique or challenge each other--and vice versa. We obviously disagreed, but dispite our different views, we remained good colleagues and--yes--friends.

I go to many conferences every year, and one of the reasons that I like going to conferences so much is because I get to know people in ways that I wouldn't be able to know them by reading their work. I find it useful to know people in the field not only as other scholars and teachers but also as people. When I know them as individuals, I feel I can understand their perspectives better when I read and respond to their work.

And even though I have become close friends with some of them over the years, it doesn't stop me from critiquing their work--and them from critiquing mine. We can do that in a civil and friendly ways and still respect each other.

I was recently engaged in a rigorous debate with Paul Stapleton and Rena Helms-Park about the importance of voice in academic writing. It all started with the 2001 special issue of the Journal of Second Language Writing on voice in L2 writing. Shortly afterwords, Paul published an article that, in effect, responded to that special issue; he then collaborated with Rena to further question the role of voice in academic writing.

Since I felt that voice could be defined (as I did in my 2001 article) in ways that has important implications for academic writing, I conducted, in collaboration with Chris Tardy, a study that sought to demonstrate the role of voice in academic writing. Then, Paul and Rena wrote a response to that article, to which Chris and I responded. The conversation on paper, which will soon appear in English for Specific Purposes, was intense.

But then, when Chris and I met Rena at AAAL, we decided to get together and have a drink to get to know each other outside the context of the critical academic conversation. We had a great time. The three of us took some pictures together, and emailed them to Paul Stapleton in Japan.

This week at Asia TEFL in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I finally had the chance to meet Paul Stapleton. We didn't get to talk too much, but we went to each other's sessions, which I thought complemented each other very well. We also managed to take a picture together.

Changing Higher Education in Japan?

The Chronicle: Daily news: 05/25/2007 -- 08: Japan's New Science Adviser Wants to Shake Up Higher Education

Changing the entrance exam system might be useful. Changing the hierarchical system? Hmm...it would be relatively easy to change the system, but that doesn't address cultural practices, which is much harder to change--especially with a top-down approach.

Dr. Ortmeier-Hooper!

Christina Ortmeier-Hooper has successfully defended her dissertation on Tuesday, May 15, 2007. Congratulations, Christina! Well done!

A New Frontier

I haven't been able to post anything on my blog for a while. It was partly because of many events happening at the same time--teaching, administrative duties, hosting guest speakers (Bruce Horner and Min-Zhan Lu), dissertation defenses and exams as well as CCCC, AAAL, Temple University conference and other speaking engagements. But there was another big reason: I was moving toward a major transition in my professional career.

In January 2008, I will be joining the English Department at the Arizona State University as an Associate Professor. There, I will work with doctoral students in Rhetoric, Composition and Linguistics; master's students in TESOL and Linguistics; and undergraduate linguistics majors. I will also be working with students in the new Ph.D. Program in Applied Linguistics.

I will, of course, have an opportunity to teach advanced graduate seminars on second language writing on a regular basis.

ASU is a great place to pursue my interest in preparing the next generation of second language writing researchers and teachers for obvious reasons: the program structure is ideal for my interdisciplinary work.

It seems that there is already a growing interest among ASU graduate students in second language writing. Over the years, I have met a number of impressive graduate students from ASU with an interest in second language writing, and I am really looking forward to collaborating with them on projects and contributing to their professional development.

It's also exciting to be able to work with a large number of outstanding faculty members in my own fields. Within the English Department, my colleagues in linguistics/TESOL will include Karen Adams, Dawn Bates, Elly Van Gelderen, Mark James and Roy Major; rhetoric and composition colleagues include Philip Bernick, Sharon Crowley, Greg Glau, Maureen Daly Goggin, Peter Goggin, Keith Miller, John Ramage, Duane Roen and Patricia Webb.

Some of my colleagues in other departments and campuses will include Akua Duku Anokye, James Paul Gee, Carole Edelsky, Chris Faltis, Patricia Friedrich, Sarah Hudelson, Jeff MacSwan, Barry Maid, Aya Matsuda, Kellie Rolstad, Bryan Smith and Terry Wiley.

I will be leaving UNH at the end of Spring 2007. In June, I will go to Malaysia to speak at Asia TEFL conference. I will spend the rest of the summer as a visiting researcher at the University of Hong Kong in June and then at the Graduate School of International Development at Nagoya University from July through the end of September.

At Nagoya University, I will teach a course on qualitative research in second language writing. For the rest of the time, I will be working on various research and writing projects while preparing for the Symposium on Second Language Writing, which will take place in September at Nagoya Gakuin University.

What that means, of course, is that my family has to relocate to the Valley of the Sun in May or June. It'll be a challenge, but I'm hoping that it'll somehow work out.

Congratulations, Christina!

Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, one of my doctoral advisees, has accepted a tenure-track position in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Christina also received the D. Scott Enright TESOL Interest Section Service Award at this year's TESOL. She spearheaded the effort to create the Second Language Writing Interest Section at TESOL and served as its founding chair.

Congratulations, Christina! UMass is lucky to have you!

CCCC/TESOL Future Convention Dates

Here is the latest:

2008
CCCC: New Orleans, April 2-5 
TESOL: New York, April 2-5

2009
CCCC: San Francisco, March 11-14 
TESOL: Denver, March 25-28

2010
CCCC: Louisville, March 17-20
TESOL: Boston, March 24-27

2011
CCCC: Atlanta, April 6-9
TESOL: New Orleans, March 16-19

2012
CCCC: St. Louis, March 21-24
TESOL: TBA

2013
CCCC: TBA
TESOL: Dallas, March 20-23

UW-Milwaukee Visit

I've been too lazy busy to update my blog, but here is a report from my visit to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

My primary hosts were Dani Goldstein and Shereen Inayatulla, doctoral students in rhetoric and composition at UWM--it was great getting to know them. They picked me up at the airport and drove me around, which brought back lots of fond memories from my Wisconsin days. What a treat!

I also got to meet many interesting students, including Rie Kumaki, a doctoral student from Japan. It was also nice to see some familiar faces--Chuck Schuster, Pat Goldstein, Kathy Kaye, Sheryl Slocum and Mary Louise Buley-Meissner, as well as Mike McDonald, a UNH graduate. Mickey Noonan also came to the talk and sent me a kind message afterwards--thanks!

Dani, Mike and Rie served as "respondents" for my talk, but after looking at their "responses," I though it would be a great idea to start with their questions and then to give my talk in response, so I asked them to go first. I thought it worked out well. I hope that wasn't too much of an imposition.

After the talk, we went out for a few drinks at a local pub. (Milwaukee has always been known for beer, but it seems to have gotten even better since my last visit in the late 1990s.) We then went to Alice's house for a nice potluck dinner.

This visit was initiated by a group of graduate students who had read and discussed some of my work. They told me that they were not sure if I would accept an invitation from graduate students, so they asked Alice to initiate the invitation. Of course I would have accepted it if it came from graduate students directly!

Funding for United States Study

http://www.iiebooks.org/funforunstat.html

This is a resource I wish I had when I was a student. Whenever I looked for external sources of funding for my studies, I was discouraged because most of them were for U.S. permanent residents or citizens. Many of the grants were also off-limits to international graduate students unless they had a collaborator who qualified.

I haven't actually seen the contents of this book, so I'm not sure if this helps, but here is one place international students might look for funding to support their studies or research projects.

Virginia Tech Visit

I'm writing this at Roanoke Airport, on my way home from Virginia Tech. At Diana George's invitation, Bruce Horner, Tom Fox and I got together for a panel and a workshop on language differences. It turned out to be a great combination, all of us representing more or less the same critical perspective but contributing different types of examples in different styles of presentation.

Virigina Tech is about to launch a new Ph.D. Program in Rhetoric and Writing, and there is a growing community of people in the field. I got to see some familiar faces--including Paul Heilker and Katy Powell. I also met some new faculty members: Kelly Pender, a Purdue alum, and Kelly Balanger. I didn't get to see Jim Dubinski because he was on sabbatical. Well, maybe next time.

Both events were well attended, and we discussed a wide range of topics--from highly theoretical to practical. The panel on Friday was mainly for the composition staff. The workshop, organized by Monique Dufour, included two people from engineering and education as well as people from the English Language Institute and the composition program.

For the first two days, all three of us stayed at The Inn at Virigina Tech, a nice hotel located on the edge of campus. On the second day, I woke up extra early to have a big buffet breakfast with Bruce. On Saturday night, Tom and I stayed at Diana's house, where we had a nice dinner with Kelly, Kelly, Matt and Gary.

CFP: Writing Research Across Boarders

WRITING RESEARCH ACROSS BORDERS
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE
2008 Santa Barbara Conference on Writing Research
University of California Santa Barbara
February 22-24, 2008

Call for Proposals

Theme: Writing Research Across Borders
Due Date: May 1
Length: under 300 words

The Gevirtz Graduate School of Education and the Writing Programs at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of California, Davis invite proposals for their interdisciplinary conference, "Writing Research Across Borders," to be held February 22-24, 2008 in Santa Barbara, California.

This is an exciting time where research on writing is having many births, rebirths, and growing spurts in many nations, with foci on many levels of schooling and development across the lifespan. At the 2008 Santa Barbara Conference on Writing Research we hope to foster dialogues across different writing research traditions, located in varied national, disciplinary, and programmatic venues. We have invited a premier panel of plenary and featured speakers to represent the diversity of writing research in the world and to open the door for further broad participation from researchers of all nations interested in exploring writing across all life stages, institutional settings, and disciplinary approaches.

This conference follows on the successes of the 2002 and 2005 Santa Barbara Conferences on Writing Research, which had the themes of "Writing as A Human Activity" and "Writing Research in the Making." Information about the 2005 conference is available at http://education.ucsb.edu/netshare/wrconf05/.

Further information about our upcoming 2008 conference is available at http://www.writing.ucsb.edu/wrconf08/.

We invite proposals for panels, roundtables, and individual presentations that discuss works in progress, completed research, and reflections on how writing research is conceived, proposed, funded, carried out, published, and responded to. Conference proposals should be submitted by May 1, 2007. Proposals should be under 300 words and in English (for a fuller statement on language diversity at our conference, please see http://www.writing.ucsb.edu/wrconf08/language.html ). Please send proposals via email (as a Microsoft Word attachment or in the email body) to writing@education.ucsb.edu or send paper copies to the address below.

TRAVEL ASSISTANCE FELLOWSHIPS:

In addition, through the generosity of the Writing Program of the University of California at Davis and Chris Thaiss, the Clark Kerr Professor of Writing at UC Davis, we are able to offer a small number of fellowships to help support travel expenses for speakers. Fellowships will be awarded based on financial need and proposal quality. If you would like to apply for a fellowship, please submit a separate fellowship application letter explaining your need for funding.

If you have questions about the fellowship application letter or other aspects of the submission process, please feel free to contact Dr. Charles Bazerman or Suzie Null, the Writing Research Across Borders Conference Coordinators. Both can be reached at the address at the bottom of the page.

Thank you for your interest in our conference. If you have any questions please contact us at the above addresses below.

For the Organizing Committee,

Charles Bazerman
Sheridan Blau
Robert Krut
Susan McLeod
Suzie Null
Paul Rogers
Amanda Stansell

http://www.writing.ucsb.edu/wrconf08/
writing@education.ucsb.edu

Committee Contact Information:

writing@education.ucsb.edu or

Writing Research Across Borders Conference Proposal Committee
c/o Charles Bazerman
Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
UC Santa BarbaraSanta Barbara, CA 93106-9490

UTEP Visit

The first major trip of this semester was a visit to the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). I knew the name "El Paso" since when I was in elementary school because "El Paso" and "Houston" were the names of two lines of shoes produced by a Japanese shoe company. I didn't know much else about El Paso before--but I learned a lot about it during this trip.

El Paso is located in the far western tip of Texas, bordering Mexico and New Mexico. Across the river is Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city with shops and restaurants. It's also fairly close to Las Cruces, New Mexico. El Paso has a strong economic ties to Juarez, and many of the UTEP students cross the border every day to attend classes. UTEP boasts itself to be the only major research institution where a majority of the students are latino/latina.

UTEP has a relatively new Ph.D. Program in Rhetoric and Composition. It is well-staffed with 11 faculty members, including Evelyn Posey, the Department Chair, and Maggy Smith, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies. The program has a strong focus on intercultural rhetoric. The program brochure even says: "We don't just study intercultural rhetoric--we live it." It also has undergraduate and graduate certificates in bilingual professional writing. Naturally, there seemed to be a strong interest in language issues not only in the program but also across the university, including Dean Howard Daudistel, with whom I had the pleasure of meeting.

UTEP faculty include some of my favorite people. Kate Mangelsdorf, who has been active in the L2 writing community at CCCC, was the one who invited me and coordinated the visit. Isabel Baca is also active at CCCC. Helen Foster and Carlos Salinas are my rhet/comp friends from Purdue--in fact, we started together, took most of the courses together, and finished at about the same time. In addition, I was thrilled to find out that Maryse Jayasuriya (my officemate from 410 Heavilon Hall) and her husband Brian Yothers (also from Purdue) were teaching at UTEP. We got to spend some time together.

During my visit, I sat in on Kate's graduate seminar on language and culture in the writing classroom, and enjoyed the lively discussion on critical thinking and critical pedagogy. I also had a meeting with 18 graduate students (including two from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces) who asked me intriguing questions about my work, about writing for publication, and other issues. They were all bright and enthusiastic--I enjoyed meeting all of them!

My talk in the afternoon on language differences in the composition classroom was well attended. I hope people in the audience enjoyed the talk and the discussion afterwards as much as I did. At the end of the session, Isabel gave me a nice gift basket she had made just for me (thank you, Isabel!).

I also enjoyed the conversations over Mexican food with some of the students and other colleagues, including Elaine Fredericksen and Tony Stafford. It was especially great because of my inclination for Mexican food. (In fact, I made fajitas for dinner tonight.)

Thank y'all for your hospitality. I had a great time in El Paso!

¡Muchas gracias a todos!

CCCC 2007 L2 Writing Meeting

Here is the information about the CCCC Committee on Second Language Writing Open Meeting at the 2007 meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Committee on Second Language Writing
Co-chairs: Paul Kei Matsuda and Susan Miller-Cochran
Day: Saturday, March 24, 2007
Time: 9:00 am–12:00 pm (Open)
Location: Concourse H, Concourse Level
Announced in program as an open meeting.

We will discuss the status of L2 writing issues at CCCC. We will also plan panels, workshops, Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting, and other L2-writing events for CCCC 2008.

Everyone is welcome--you don't have to be a committee member to join us! Please feel free to drop by anytime during the meeting.

UNH Commencement Speakers

I just found out that the keynote speakers at this year's commencement are George H. W. Bush (aka GWB's Dad) and Bill Clinton.

Rumor Has It

Someone just emailed me and asked if it was just a rumor--that the Ph.D. Program in Composition Studies at UNH was phasing out.

Well, it's just a rumor.

shirin

I just received a brilliant question about writing assessment from someone named "shirin," a Ph.D. student at Tehran University. I wrote a response, but the email address wasn't working. Shirin, if you see this message, please contact me again and give me an alteranative email address.

CFP: Asian Journal of English Language Teaching

CALL FOR PAPERS

Submission Guidelines

The Asian Journal of English Language Teaching (AJELT) encourages submission of manuscripts that (1) link ESL/EFL theory, research, and pedagogy and (2) relate specifically to teaching English to Asians at the university level. Reviews of books and multimedia resources and reports of ongoing projects are also welcome.

Manuscripts. Submissions should no more than 20-pages double-spaced in length; reports should be no longer than 12 pages. Authors should include a cover page with the full title of the paper, the author’s name, e-mail address, postal address, phone number, and if available, the fax number. The author’s name should not appear elsewhere in the article.

Articles and reports should be sent as e-mail attachments (i.e., Microsoft Word documents) to AJELT Editors, Gwendolyn Gong and Peter Gu .

Review essays should be sent as electronic submissions to Review Editor, Lixian Jin .

It is important to include a statement indicating that the submission is neither currently being reviewed nor will be submitted for review at the same time the manuscript is being considered by AJELT.

References. In the text, references should be cited using the author’s last name and year of publication. If quotations are used, these should additionally have page numbers (Wong & Lam, 1993, p. 291). The reference list should be arranged alphabetically following the guidelines of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). TESOL Quarterly and English for Specific Purposes Journal follow these guidelines.

Abstracts. All articles should have an abstract between 100 and 200 words in length.

Tables and Figures. Numerical tables can be typeset. Figures (graphs, illustrations, symbols) must be submitted as camera ready.

You should receive acknowledgement of receipt of your article, followed by comments from referees. Articles accepted for inclusion in the next volume should be revised and returned in two forms: on paper and in electronic form.

The editors reserve the right to make minor changes within articles prior to publication.

Plans

Here are my (still very tentative) plans for the next year and a half--my sabbatical year.

Since I have received the Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, I will be on a year-long leave from June 2007 to August 2008. In general, I won't be available to anyone except those who are collaborating with me on a research project or whose dissertations I am chairing.

I will still be available for talks and consulting, but no more than usual because I will need to work on my writing projects.

In June, I will be traveling to various parts of Asia--Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Kobe, and possibly Beijing. From July through the end of September, I will be in Japan in preparation for the Symposium in mid-September. I will likely be a visiting researcher at a university in Japan--assuming that everything goes as planned.

I will be back in the States for the UNH Conference in October and NCTE in November. For the rest of the year, I will be working on my research and writing projects. I will, of course, attend a few conferences in Spring 2008.

AILA will be in late August, possibly during the first week of school. But it'll be in Essen, Germany. How could I possibly miss it?

Some of these plans are still very tentative because a few big pieces are missing. Not knowing exactly where I will be or what I will be doing is both exciting and unsettling at the same time.

CCCC 2007 and International Participants

Cheryl Glenn, the CCCC Convention Chair, is interested in finding ways to help international participants to get the most out of the 2007 CCCC Convention in New York (March 21-24, 2007). Below, I have attached her message to the Executive Committee with a list of sessions with an international theme.

Each year, CCCC hosts a morning reception for first-time CCCC attendees from 7 a.m. to 8:15 a.m.--before the Opening General Session. If this is your first CCCC, you'll receive an invitation to this social event, where you will get to meet other first timers as well as many seasoned participants. I will be there to meet many of you as well.

To recognize the presence and contribution of all international participants, Cheryl has also asked me to compile a list of names and email addresses of international participants, including international students and faculty who are studying and/or teaching in North America. If you come from a country other than the United States, please visit the following web site to get on the list of international participants at CCCC 2007.

http://matsuda.jslw.org/cccc/committee/international.html

Also, the CCCC Committee on Second Language Writing will host an annual open meeting Saturday morning. Susan Miller-Cochran and I have requested a room from 9 to 12 on Saturday, March 24, 2007. As usual, it will not appear on the session schedule in the program because it is a committee meeting; instead, the time and room will be listed under committee meetings. At the meeting, we will discuss the status of L2 issues at CCCC and plan activities and sessions for the following year. Please feel free to drop by even for a few minutes just to say "hi" to a friendly community of L2 writing people at CCCC and to learn about various professional opportunities.

From: Cheryl Glenn
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 8:04 AM
To: CCCC Executive Committee.
Subject: [cccc-executive-committee] Sessions with International Perspectives at CCCC 2007


Dear Colleagues,

As you all probably know by now, this year's convention will host folks from every state in the union as well as from twenty countries outside the USA. I very much hope that our international guests will have a productive time with us--and that they'll return next year. Meeting in midtown Manhattan is a financial burden for all of us, to be sure, but for folks from Turkey, Lebanon, and China, the financial investment is even greater. So I'm thinking that if we work together to make the convention worth their investment, we'll also be enriching our own convention experiences and professional perspectives.

To that end, I am enlisting your support in introducing yourself to these folks, many of whom will be first-time attendees. You may recognize them by their institutional affiliation or their burgundy ribbon. I also encourage you to make the time to attend one of their sessions, which I've listed below. (I think I've located all of them and apologize ahead of time if I've missed any. Please feel free to emend and/or circulate my list.)

Thank you for considering my request.
I'm looking forward to seeing you all in March!

Cheryl

International Perspectives

A.03 The Circulation of Discourse across Institutional Boundaries: How (New) Genres (Re)Shape the Practices of Placement, Assessment, and Public Discourse
A.16 Still Fighting After All These Years?: Reflections on Jane Tompkins’ “Fighting Words”
B.03 Cultures of Writing and Writing Instruction: Toward Expressing Identity in an International Context
C.13 Transnational Rhetorics and Pedagogies
C.33 The Literature of Everyday Life: Teaching Creative Writing and Screen Plays with History and the Obscure
E.29 Re-thinking Voice(s)
F.00 Double Trouble: Misunderstanding Chinese Rhetorics
F.10 Individually and Institutionally Constructed Language Identities: Lessons from Multilingual Students
F.20 Pacific Islander Rhetorics: Language, Nationhood, and De/colonization
F.32 Interrogating Theory and Practices with ESL and Writing
H.25 Re-presenting Language Identities in Jamaican Composition Classrooms
I.12 Writing a Scholarly Identity: Disciplinary Identities, Discursive Cultures, and Rhetorical Agency
I.10 Trans-National Rhetoric: Queering Heteronormative Stated Identities
I.32 The Power of the People's Language and the Culture of Literacy
J.00 False Identities and the Lost Honour of Rhetoric
J.18 Forging Community Identities through Service Learning: The Complicated National and International Conversations in an Era of Immigration, Gentrification, and Migration
J.25 Grounded Theory in Practice
J.30 Advancing the Multiliteracy of ESL/EFL Students
K.29 Preparing Students to Communicate as Professionals through Grant Writing, Engineering Design, and 'Reality-Based' Approaches
L.04 Secret Identities Unmasked: Composition Meets Creative Nonfiction Face to Face
L.29 Discriminatory Institutions and Resistant Identities
M.04 The Visual Rhetoric of Ethnic Identity
M.10 Crafting Rhetorical Space: Public Discourse and the Forging of Complex Identities
M.29 Where the Bloody Hell Are We? Subverting and Resisting the Dominant Discourse through Hip Hop, Oral Tradition, and Online Text
O.12 Genre, Language, and Identity: Multiple Perspectives on the Study and Teaching of Genre
O.16 Escape from Flatland: Towards a Multi-Dimensional Identity
O.29 Assigning and Assessing Student Writing Across the Curriculum
P.01 Visual Constructions and Disciplinary Identity
P.06 Composition, Civic Responsibilities, and Situated Identities: Historical, Theoretical, and Pedagogical Perspectives on Teaching for Citizenship
P.09 (Re)Presenting Toulmin
P.30 Cultures of Writing and Writing Instruction: Toward Expressing Identity in an International Context
P.32 Perspectives on the Writing-Intensive Classroom
P.34 Identity, Ethnography, and Literacy Biographies

Cheryl Glenn
Professor of English
Associate Chair, Conference on College Composition and Communication
Co-director, Center for Civic Engagement and Democratic Deliberation
232 South Burrowes Building
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802-6201
814/863-0271 (o)
814/863-7285 (fax)

Visit the CCCC 2007 Convention Preview: www.ncte.org/cccc/conv

Locating ESL Sections of First-Year Composition

A friend of mine, who has just gotten a WPA job asked me about an interesting institutional arrangement in U.S. higher education, which has not been discussed widely in the literature. Since I wrote a fairly extensive response that might be interesting to some people, I thought I'd post it here as well:

I don't think there has been enough discussion of issues surrounding having mainstream and ESL composition courses in two separate departments, but the arrangement itself is not that unusual. Many institutions have mainstream composition courses in the English Department and ESL sections in foreign language, linguistics, applied linguistics, and even communication departments, and the departmental affiliation often changes overtime. (See, for example, Stephanie Vandrick's description of changes that took place at University of San Francisco.)

As with anything else in higher education, the reason has mostly to do with disciplinary and institutional (and sometimes personal) politics rather than pedagogical effectiveness. ESL composition, just like mainstream composition, is a major cash cow that ensures enrollment, especially where department budgets have been dependent on the FTE at one point or another. They might even use it as an excuse for creating another tenure-track position--often with no real intention of hiring anyone with the necessary expertise.

My hunch, based on what I've seen, is that, if there is a department that has a TESOL program, that department would usually claim it; if not, linguistics would grab it; foreign language department is next on the list. If none of them claim it, then the English Department would reluctantly hire someone to teach one. If the English Department really doesn't want to bother, then communication department might seize the opportunity.

Unless there is someone in the department who specialize in ESL writing, none of these departments are really equipped to do an adequate job, but the sad truth is that there still aren't enough ESL writing specialists to go around, so the practice goes on. And if anyone with a specialization were to arise or to be hired into a department, it would be the existing department--whatever it happens to be--that has the ESL writing courses. On occasion, they are hired into a new administrative unit being created that does not have a department status, such as an independent writing/communication unit. In rare cases, people who have a strong background in ESL writing have found themselves in a different department for reasons other than the programmatic needs of the ESL sections per se. You seem to fit into this category.

But then again, this is how composition at most institutions ended up in the English Department. Few people in the emerging departments of English in the early part of the 20th century had an expertise or strong interest in teaching composition, but no one else seemed to be more qualified (or interested) than those who dealt with written English, albeit on the consumption side (or "creative" production side, which rarely gets mentioned in this discussion).

Had the new rhetoric of composition arisen a few years earlier, things might have been different. There were a number of historical moments when composition could have moved to communication along with rhetoric (which may have made more sense), but, according to Diana George and John Trimbur, so-called "expressivists" like Ken Macrorie tried to make sure that composition had nothing to do with what they saw as the pseudo scientists.

The irony is that composition became established as a discipline at around the same time partly because of the rise of social scientific research, but then again, that strand of composition has become somewhat alienated by those with strong humanist inclinations and anti-utilitalian sentiments--in what Bob Connors would have described as the Englishization of composition.

Revelant Sources

Connors, Robert J. "The Erasure of the Sentence." College Composition and Communication 52.1 (2000): 96-128.

George, Diana, and John Trimbur. The "Communication Battle," or Whatever Happened to the 4th C?" College Composition and Communication 50.4 (1999): 682-698.

Vandrick, Stephanie. "Shifting Sites, Shifting Identities: A Thirty-Year Perspective." The Politics of Second Language Writing: In Search of the Promised Land. Ed. Paul Kei Matsuda, Christina Ortmeier-Hooper and Xiaoye You. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2006. 280-293.

When Do You Stop Reading?

You don't, of course.

But it's impossible to have read everything, and at some point, we need to start publishing--otherwise no one will ever be able to publish anything.

Some of my grad students in the research methods course last semester asked, "When can we say we've read enough?"

This may seem like a complicated question, but here is my rule-of-thumb answer: When you know more than your audience.

Then, read as you write and read more after you write, always keeping in mind that what we can say at any given moment is limited by what we know, and that there is always more to read if we were to reach a wider audience and to continue to be a viable voice in the field.

It also keeps me humble to think that my audience is always reading more and more to catch up with me. In order to stay current in the field, I must read on.

Relevant past posts:

Read Widely
Read Everything Again
Read Everything

CFP: 2007 UNH Composition Conference

Call for Conference Proposal
Literacies--Personal, Professional, Academic
October 12-13, 2007

The University of New Hampshire is offering a composition conference with keynotes Ellen Cushman (Michigan State University), Paul Kei Matsuda (University of New Hampshire), Gwendolyn D. Pough (Syracuse University) and Stuart Selber (Penn State University). The focus will be on exploring literacy as it is learned inside and outside of school, and its multiple uses.

We invite proposals for 75-minute concurrent sessions. Sessions can be proposed by an individual or a group of presenters. We prefer interactive sessions and hope to avoid the reading of papers. Among the possible topics to be addressed are: literacy, technology and accessibility; multi-media literacies; virtual reading and writing communities; non-school sponsors of literacy; literacy norms and second language learners; literacy and popular culture; and new discourse conventions in academic writing.

Proposals should include: Session Title; Proposal Type (individual or group); Complete contact information of each presenter including name, address, daytime phone and email address; A 400-word session description as well as a 50-word summary.

Send to:

UNH English Department
Attn: Composition Conference
95 Main Street
Durham, NH 03824

Postmark deadline: Monday, May 14, 2007

Please direct all questions to Sabina Foote.

http://www.unh.edu/composition/conference/

Proposal Writing

Happy New Year to you all!

Nagoya Symposium is coming up in about 9 1/2 months, and the deadline for proposals--January 31, 2007, is fast approaching. I'm glad to report that a good number of people have submitted their proposals, but given the general tendencies, many people will likely wait until the last few weeks of January to submit their proposals.

Even writing teachers and researchers are subject to procrastination, I guess.

I'm hoping to see a good representation of regulars--people who have participated in past symposia. But I'm also looking forward to receiving many proposals from new people--people who have not been able to attend previous syposia.

Some of them may have been unable to participate because of the location or timing. Others may have become interested in L2 writing only recently.

I also have heard from a few people that they thought--or they had been told--their study was not worth presenting at an international forum. No, not in terms of the quality of research or the methodological rigor, but in terms of their generalizability. They are not sure if the particular population of students they are working with or the institutional context is generalizable to other countries.

Well, if that's the concern, that's all the more reason to get it out there. People from certain dominant countries (e.g., U.K. and U.S.) publish their studies in international forums all the time--often without thinking about their implications for other countries. (I'm not saying this is good, but that's the way it has long been in some fields.)

What is important, however, is the effort to use the studies from unique situations by relating to the existing generalizations and abstractions (i.e., theories) that came from those dominant contexts. If you believe the context is different from those dominant countries, use the study to document what the differences are in a more concrete terms. Are the differences real and significant enough to matter? If so, how can that context challenge, endorse, or shed light on the existing insights?

A conference presentation is a step before publication where this kind of discussion can take place because there will be people who represent various contexts. Even if you can't see what is (or isn't) particularly unique about your own context, you might be able to find out by sharing your work with others who can point out what's interesting and unique about your work.

I hope this year's Symposium will provide an opportunity to many presenters and participants to think through these issues.

In Memoriam: Don Murray

In Memoriam
Donald Morison Murray (1924-2006)


Donald Morison Murray, Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, died of heart failure in the morning on Saturday, December 30, 2006. He was 82.

After returning from World War II, where he served as a paratrooper, Don attended the University of New Hampshire on a G. I. bill, majoring in English. He became a journalist and, as an editorial writer for Boston Herald, received Pulitzer Prize at the age of 29. After a brief career as a freelance writer, he joined the University of New Hampshire faculty in 1963, where he established himself as one of the most prominent leaders of the writing process movement in composition studies.

His short 1972 article, "Teach Writing as a Process, Not Product" provided an influential catch phrase that stimulated the development of the process movement in composition studies. Various editions of A writer teaches writing, first published in 1968, also inspired generations of writing teachers.

Even after his retirement, he served as a writing coach to many while continuing to produce books as well as regular columns for the Boston Globe. He was also a neighborhood hero. Everyone knew Don Murray when he came into the Bagelry or Young’s Restaurant for breakfast.

He lost his second wife, Minne Mae, in February 2005, after years of fighting Parkinson’s disease. But he continued to cope with the joys and sorrows of his life by taking people out to dinner, by buying bigger and bigger computer monitors, by driving around in a new red Volvo, and by writing.

Don's favorite quote from Roman poet Horace (65-8 B.C.E.) was "nulla dies sine linea" (never a day without a line). He did indeed write everyday. He kept a log of the number of words he produced each day, taking particular pride in the fact that he kept up even in hospital bed.

In what has become his last Globe column, Don reflected on the reason he never took a job as an editor: “I'm a writer. I want to stay a writer. No promotions please.”

The Globe quotes Don’s daughter Anne as saying: "He basically lived through his writing. In some ways that was more real to him than his real life. Everything had to be sifted through his writing—the good and bad. His whole life was writing."

He was a writer indeed. Even those who have never met him will remember him through his writing.

http://www.unh.edu/journalism/donmurray.htm