Question 1

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 thi

s nature is to conduct an advanced

search on Google.

For example, t

he 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 throug

h 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, t

he IEEE Computer Soc

ie

ty Technical

Comm

ittee 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 stateme

nt 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.

Desc

ription

of

Conference

R

esearch 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). So

me 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 be

ing

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 conferen

ce. If you cannot find this

information, you may use information from

a conference from a previous year or, if

necessary,

information for the

organizat

ion’s

upcoming conference.

Once you have located a suitable conference, p

eruse

the topics that were or will be covered at the

conference by looking at the

Call for Papers

or the

Report on P

resentations

.

In this section, you

will

find a list of perhaps 2

0

–

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 t

heme

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 imp

ortant 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:

A

t the

most recent

Children's Liter

ature Conference,

the theme was digital texts, so there

were many presentations on graphic novels and children's movies. Some of the most

important talks w

ere 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 Language

s (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 high

–

technolo

gy, non

–

traditional, 2.0 world amidst

the reduction of re

sources 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 i

n 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 a

ware 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 wil

l 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

profes

sional

development in your field.

Length of your paper:

Your report should be 800

–

1200 words.