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.
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.
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
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
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…
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…
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).
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)
What Do These Articles Tell Us?
 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?
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…
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
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)