This post on the topic To Read or Not To Read at College Composition and Communications Conference is part of an electronic conversation that is taking place on PRE/TEXT List and other sites. For the list of posts in the discussion, go to CCCC.

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Sender: Pre/Text issues discussion [PTISSUES@MIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU]
Subject: rf--ch: To read, or not to read at CCCC?
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Cynthia Haynes' "lament" about the increasingly "flexible" venues CCCC is providing for our "presentations" struck a chord, so to speak.

There are really two issues involved: reading vs extemporaneous speaking, and the amount of time one is allowed, on the program.

4 C's has always said that it didn't want "read papers" but that people should use their best classroom presentation manner. Over the years I have been attending, I have seen very few presenters who didn't read pretty much verbatim from a text. And by and large, those who extemped their talks did so very badly--often being disorganized, and often not getting to their major material within the allotted time. (Sometimes getting lost in their overheads.) While I sometimes appreciated the informality, it was rarely an adequate trade off. Most of us with a lot of classroom time don't even get warmed up when we extemporize on a subject for twenty minutes!

So I grew to prefer the carefully planned and worded paper--assuming that it had been crafted with oral delivery in mind, and was read in something more than a low monotone. (Practice with a tape-recorder plus a stopwatch should precede most presentations for most of us most of the time.)

But the newer formats with five minutes (or even less) per speaker are a different twist, one I oppose mightily. They are a function of the combination of two social features of our business. (a) They result from our own "success"--more and more people now attend CCCC and want on the program. In an effort to accomodate more people, sessions have been added and these monster sessions with six or twenty "speakers" have been created. (This year the planned sessions are actually beginning on Wednesday evening, in order to allow extra slots on the program in a city with limited conference space.)

(b) Given the limited money universities now allocate for travel, lots of people can't get any departmental support unless they are "on the program." So to encourage attendance, and the department support, we have gone to these cramming measures. Of course the pressure to have VITAE entries has also made people want not to "attend" the conference but to be "on the program"--even if their actual role is only two minutes long.

I have spoken against these mass panel sessions in the CCCC Exec Committee, but got very little support when the practical arguments above were brought up. I will not, however, attend any session that has six or more "speakers" in a ninety minute session.

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Dick Fulkerson
Director of English Graduate Studies
Coordinator of Composition
Department of Literature and Languages
East Texas State University
Commerce, TX 75429
rf5271@etsuadmn. etsu.edu
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"There are two sorts of people in this world: those who believe in
binary thinking and those who don't."
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