Guidelines for Journal Conference 1
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Your conference is 10 minutes in length. You are in charge of the time; therefore, you should practice
you talk with someone. You might practice with someone in the class, or you might ask a parent to
look at the guidelines and be your audience. Think about the conference as a conversation that you lead.
I will ask questions occasionally (and you should be able to answer them swiftly with references to the right
hand sides of your journal) and I will offer comments where appropriate. You, though, have to manage your
time wisely in order to cover everything you need to say. While I will allow you to go over a minute or two, I
must stop you at 12 minutes.
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The Rhetorical Situation
Your Task: Your purpose is to identify and prove your growth as a critical reader in these first few weeks
of school.
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You, the Writer/Speaker: How will use establish authority and credibility with your audience (me)?
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Your Context: The context of the assignment is our classroom work.
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Your Audience: I am your only audience, and I am evaluating your learning in the area of critical reading
for the first quarter of the course. You can, obviously, assume that I know the works you are discussing, so
there is no need to summarize the readings.
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Requirements
Nabokov, Prose, Perrine, Frost, and Brodsky have allowed us to compose a list of what critical
readers do—use that list to identify those points you want to make about your reading growth. This
is the most important step; after all, it is the thesis. DO NOT SKIP over this point. You need a clear,
specific, concise thesis statement. I want all of you to remember the problems you had in crafting
your thesis statements for the visual essay. Many of those first attempts at a thesis were vague and
general, confusing, and big enough for a 400-page book. Take your time to craft a thesis that will
clearly guide this essay that you deliver orally. DO NOT USE A THREE-PART THESIS.
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Given your task here, perhaps the best organizational method is comparison/contrast. All of you wrote
comparison papers last year in your English classes, so you can draw on that experience as you prepare
your talks. Consider yourself as a reader before this class started. Where are you now? Compose your
first draft with these questions in mind along with the list of what critical readers do.

The points you make about your growth as a critical reader must be the focus of your talk. Do not
allow the texts to drive your conference. As you prepare, keep asking yourself if you are using the texts as
evidence for the points you are making about your critical reader growth.

No one can possibly prove growth in every area. Choose your points of growth carefully. Review all of
the practice journals we did in class. Review your summer reading work. Review your left-hand sides of the
journal. What SHOULD be your focus based on that review work? And remember that it is perfectly
acceptable to discuss a problem you are having with an area of reading or with a text. You still might not
fully understand something in the Perrine, for example. Bring that up in the conference. This conference
should be an honest one: remember the role of candor in establishing your credibility as a writer/speaker.
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You must cover these texts in the conference: _______________________________________
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Your grade is based on the conference. You cannot possibly have a full discussion without full and
thorough attention to all parts of the journal work, though. If you have not kept up with your journal, if you
have not written full answers in full sentences to all of the questions asked, if you have not integrated class
notes, if you cannot demonstrate a consistent work ethic with your journal; do not expect a grade above a C.