Seminar I Communicating disciplinary knowledge to a wide audience: How students engage with popularisation of science in 3MT presentations

The rapid development of communication technologies and changing ways of knowledge exchange are bringing up new academic contexts in which students, as future scientists, are exposed to a more unpredictable grouping of audience and diversified forms of interaction. Three Minute Thesis (3MT) presentations emerged as a new academic genre, which train research postgraduate students to communicate their research within three minutes to a general audience. In this talk, I seek to present the rhetorical language use students draw on to construct a persuasive speech while building an inclusive relationship with the audience. The analysis helps us to see how the particular rhetorical contexts of genre, register and disciplinary knowledge shape students' use of the interactional resources. This also suggests how students understand the connection between their disciplinary knowledge and real-world concerns and the way they adapt their discourse accordingly.