Writing for College Composition and Communication

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Writing for College Composition and Communication

• The fields flagship journal

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CCC is

• The journal for CCCC (http//www.ncte.org/cccc/)
• Which is a division of NCTE (http//www.ncte.org/)
  

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Mission

• To present the best work in composition,
  addressing a significant scholarly issue related
  to the teaching of college level writing.

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Scope

• CCC publishes critical work on the study and
  teaching of reading and writing at the college
  level.

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Submission Guidelines

• Article submissions should be
• 4,000 7,000 words long
• MLA style
• In triplicate
• Without identifying information
• (Blind Submissions ok)

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Submission Guidelines

• Articles are
• Peer Reviewed
• Not often accepted
• 20/220 last year (a bit less than 9.091)

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Between the Covers

• Scholarly Articles (4-5 per issue)
• Interchanges, Symposia, In Brief
• Book Reviews (solicited only)
• Calls for Papers
• Letter from the Editor (submission clues)
• Advertisements (tasteful, relevant, grayscale)

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Article Topics (broadly construed)

• Composition
• Linguistics
• Rhetoric
• Pedagogy (Theory Application)

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Some article foci

• Teaching practices
• Locating teaching practices in their historical
  and institutional contexts
• Connecting current work in composition studies to
  work going on elsewhere in English and related
  fields.

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For example

• English Studies (including literary studies)
• Cultural Studies
• Critical Theory
• Literacy Studies
• Race Studies
• Philosophy
• Assessment
• Writing Program Administration
• Technologies
• Gender and Race Studies

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Scholarly article conventions

• Overt
• (and covert)

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Nearly every article has

• An abstract
• of sorts
• Explanatory endnotes
• 0-16
• Citations
• 6-101
• Primarily secondary sources
• 21 (low)
• 151 (high)

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And

• Section Headers
• Average of 4-8 section headers and a similar
  number of pullouts
• Nearly all articles end with a short author
  biography
• Articles do not have key word categorization

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Some articles also have

• Epigraphs
• Acknowledgements
• Bullets and/or numbered lists
• Photographs and/or illustrations
• Graphs and/or Charts
• Web page images

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Most articles cite

• CCC (by far and away)
• College English
• TESOL Quarterly
• Rhetoric Review, Kairos, JBTC, Research in the
  Teaching of English, Computers and Composition
• And a host of others

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A Few Articles Analyzed
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Detailed analysis of an article I

• Rhetorical Borderlands Chinese American
  Rhetoric in the Making, by LuMing Mao. (Volume
  56, Number 3, February 2005.)

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Introduction

• Clearly structured and effective
• The author wrote about the general topic of
  growing pattern of how emergent discourses are
  trying to define themselves. Then he
  effortlessly introduced the theme of the article
  the making of the Chinese American rhetoric.
• By using Chinese fortune cookies as an analogy in
  the beginning of the article, the author shows a
  keen sense of his audience.
• Therefore it is a successful introduction

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Organization

• Carefully-written transition sentences and
  transition paragraphs throughout the article.
• The analogy of Chinese fortune cookies
  stitches the whole article together from
  introduction to the conclusion.
• The section headlines in bold letters are very
  helpful. Also, the opening paragraph of each
  part of the article does a great job of making
  meaningful transitions.

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More thoughts

• To conform to CCC guidelines which mainly focus
  on teaching college writing, the author should
  have more deeply explored the relevance of this
  topic to modern college writing, in my opinion.
  This indicates that CCC is willing to broaden its
  guidelines to fit in an interesting article.

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Still more

• The article has 25 notes and 62 citations.
• It is also long, compared with other CCC
  articles 53 pages

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Thoughts about submissions I

• Broad and interdisciplinary
• I will look for contributions that represent a
  variety of subfields and interdisciplinary
  approaches, grounded in the scholarly contexts of
  composition studies.I hope also to broaden
  perspectives, taking us each out of our own
  sometimes narrowly prescribed areas of interest.
• (Editor Deborah Holdstein, From the editor CCC
  in 2005 Feb. 2005)

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Thoughts about submission II

• Being innovative, even bold or strange
• Ours is a tradition of innovation. (From the
  Editor CCC in 2005) "Not Too Late to Take the
  Sanitation Test" Notes of a Non-Gifted Academic
  from the Working ClassAuthor Borkowski, David
  Sep.2004, P94
• Out of the Dead House Nineteenth-Century Women
  Physicians and the Writing of MedicineAuthor
  Braun, Lundy Sep. 2002, P143
• Gypsy Academics and Mother-Teachers Gender,
  Contingent Labor, and Writing Instruction
• Author Brown, Amanda Feb. 200 P500

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Thoughts about submission III

• For those who are technologically savvy
• The 2005 CCCC Chairs address is talking about
  on-line writing and internet blogs with a
  multi-media on-line version!
• A video of students performing their work is
  available at the CCC online web site to accompany
  an article titled Performing writing, performing
  literacy published in CCC 572 /Dec.2005
• So it is quite attractive if you add state-of-the
  art technology

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Thoughts about submission IV

• For non-native authors
• CCCC statement on second language writing and
  writers (June 2001, p669) acknowledging the
  emergence of non-native writers in the field.
• Three examples of those peoples work
• Ideology, Textbooks, and the Rhetoric of
  Production in China by Xiaoye You, Volume 56,
  Number 4, June 2005
• Rhetorical Borderlands Chinese American
  Rhetoric in the Making by LuMing Mao, Volume 56,
  Number 3, February 2005
• An Essay on the Work of Composition Composing
  English against the Order of Fast Capitalism by
  Lu Min-zhan

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More for non-native writers

• CCCC Honor won by a minority writer
• The CCCC 2005 James Berlin Memorial Outstanding
  Dissertation Award was presented to Haivan Viet
  Hoang, To Come Together and Create a Movement
  Solidarity Rhetoric in the Vietnamese American
  Coalition (VAC).

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Thoughts for submission V

• Planning ahead for special issues
• In CCC Announcements and Calls, you may find
  calls for proposals for special issues (can be
  one year ahead of the publishing time).
• The Fall 2007 special issue will focus on Across
  the Disciplines. The deadline for proposals just
  passed this September. So please look out for
  next call for special issues.

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Thoughts about submissions VI

• Symposiums and Interchanges
• CCC will offer readers the opportunity to read
  and respond to contributions by established,
  prominent thinkers in our field who take on
  issues of importance and controversy. Toward
  this end, I will often feature a regular
  symposium (or interchange) of responses to
  particular articles.
• From the Editor CCC in 2005 CCC563 /Feb.
  2005.

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Samples of Interchanges

• Interchanges CCC 571 Sep. 2005
• On asking Impertinent Questions --Richard E.
  Miller
• An Impertinent Answer --Irvin Peckham
• An essay on an essay about essays Response to
  Richard Millers on asking impertinent
  questions Shirley K. Rose
• Richard Millers response to Shirley Rose and Irv
  Peckham

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Articles read in depth

• Rui
• Rhetorical Borderlands Chinese American
  Rhetoric in the Making, by LuMing Mao. CCC 563)
• Beth
• Pedagogies of the Students Right Era The
  Language Curriculum Research Groups Project for
  Linguistic Diversity, by Scott Wible. (CCC
  573, 442-478).
• Joel
• 2005 CCCC Chair's Address Who Owns Writing,
  by Hesse, Douglas D. (CCC 572, 335-357).

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And now

for something completely different
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TITLE MATCH

• The
• CURMUDGEON
• vs.
• The
• HAMMER

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Standard Academic Format
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Or not

• ?

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The match-up?

• (do articles published match the journals
  statement about what it publishes)
• The editorial staff of CCC invites submission of
  research and scholarship in composition studies
  that supports college teachers in reflecting on
  and improving the practices in teaching writing.

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Subject matter and methodologies

• Hammer
• Broad range of subjects
• Related, in one way or another, to composition or
  rhetoric, or both
• Narrower range of methodologies
• Textual analysis (broadly construed)
• Theoretical and Historical Approaches
• Qualitative Research
• Ethnography, interview, case study, some survey

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Exception

• Curmudgeon declines to engage in the discussion
• at this point!
• O.k. point conceded.

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The Standard of Standards

• Hammer
• Journals flagship status is reflected in its
  content and structure.
• Introductions and conclusions Standard academic
  articles with introductions that define and
  refine the question, followed by literature
  review or historical overviews, then clearly
  defined position. Conclusions are usually strong
  but not sweeping.

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Whats Standard?

• Curmudgeon
• Introductions and conclusions Some willingness
  to push the boundaries
• Starts with narrative seemingly not directly
  related to topic (the right to sing Spirituals),
  goes on to humor (writing by computer evaluated
  by computer - check it out quite funny).
• Stirring conclusion rewrite of a spiritual

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Organizational Moves

• Hammer
• Usually clear, sometimes explicit.
• Forecasts
• Transitions

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(Dis) Organizational Moves

• Curmudgeon
• Moves at a leisurely pace. Unlike most other CCC
  articles no explicit transitions. Glyphs indicate
  a break as topic shifts.

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Argumentative Moves

• Hammer
• Usually clear, sometimes explicit
• Forecasts
• Transitions

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(Not So) Argumentative Moves (Why argue? Have a
nice glass of tea instead.)

• Curmudgeon
• Easy and interesting to read, BUT not quite so
  easy to pick out the argument and the
  argumentative moves.

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Use of Resources

• Hammer
• Lit Review
• Completely
• Quotations v Paraphrases
• Paraphrases
• Primary v secondary sources
• Secondary (all the way)

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Use of Resources

• Curmudgeon
• Lit Review
• Not really
• Quotations vs. Paraphrases
• Some of one some of the other
• Primary vs. secondary sources
• Some of one some of the other

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Design

• Hammer
• The journals status and authority is reflected
  in its design
• Traditional layout, materials, structures, and
  fonts
• No mistakes

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Design

• Curmudgeon
• The print article preserves the flavor of a
  website and the richness of web textual media
  that can only partly reproduced in print
  (hypertext, the look of a webpage including
  arrangement of text and image on the page).
• It is accessible on the website.

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In Conclusion

• U2 CAN BE A CCC
• EASY WRITER SIMPLY BY FOLLOWING THESE HELPFUL
  TIPS

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Hot Tips from Holdstein

• Deborah Holdstein, editor, CCC
• http//www.niu.edu/PubAffairs/RELEASES/2005/march/
  engchair.shtml

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Know Your Area

• And do your homework
• Good scholarship depends upon strong research.

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Use MLA and Use it Well

• CCC carefully checks facts and sources. Mistakes
  will delay publication.
• (Or worse)

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Think, Think, Think

• You are probably not the first person whos ever
  had this idea.

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A Seminar Paper

• Does Not an Article Make
• Your paper might provide the basis for an
  article, but it will not become one without
  substantial research and revision.

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Keep on Reading

• Stay current. Its important to know what others
  are doing and understand how your work connects
  to theirs.

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GOOD LUCK!! WRITERS!

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Presented to you by

• Beth the Hammer Campbell
• Joel the Curmudgeon Diamond
• Rui the Peacemaker Ma