Academic Persuasive Interaction In 3MT Presentations By Medical Postgraduates

3MT(Three-minute thesis)presentations refer to students’ conveying subject knowledge to non-professional audiences within three minutes,which has become a novel type of academic oral English.Although the 3MT presentations have attracted more and more attention,we still lack the knowledge of how speakers can impart disciplinary knowledge to the public.In order to make up for this oversight,this study this study establishes a corpus consisting of 3MT presentations of 15 medical master students from a Double First-Class University and their corresponding master’s theses abstracts and adopts two approaches,namely,move analysis and metadiscourse analysis,in order to try to compare the similarities and differences between the 3MT presentations and the MA theses abstracts.This study adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.In terms of quantitative research,this study uses the move structure proposed by Hu and Liu(2018)and the metadiscourse model proposed by Hyland(2005)as the analytical framework to label and analyze the corpus quantitatively and attempts to find out the differences between 3MT presentations and MA theses abstracts in terms of rhetorical moves and metadiscourse distribution.In terms of qualitative analysis,this study invited six 3MT competition participants as research subjects to conduct semi-structured interviews respectively.Through qualitative analysis of interviews,this study attempts to discover the underlying reasons for the differences in move structures and metadiscourse distribution in 3MT presentations and MA theses abstracts.In terms of rhetorical moves,the Orientation,Purpose,Methods,Results and Implication are five obligatory moves in the 3MT presentations.In MA theses abstracts,there are four obligatory moves,namely,Purpose,Methods,Results and Implication.Similarly,there is almost no Framework between 3MT presentations and MA theses abstracts.In terms of the proportion of rhetorical moves,Orientation accounts for about one third of 3MT presentations,but it is not mentioned in MA theses abstracts.In terms of metadiscourse,the frequency of stance markers in 3MT presentations is twice than that of MA theses abstracts.Attitude markers and self-mention appear more frequently in 3MT presentations,and the use of boosters is more frequent in MA theses abstracts.Qualitative analysis has found certain factors causing the above differences.The public without disciplinary knowledge need 3MT presenters to popularize the diseases,so Orientation accounts for a high proportion in 3MT presentations.The reason why Results move accounts for a higher proportion in MA theses abstracts is that they need data support,while in 3MT presentations,it can be summarized in one sentence.In the 3MT presentations,presenters tend to express their attitudes to the public and mention personal contribution to the research,while the reason why MA theses abstracts rarely used self-mention because of the objectivity of academic papers.Therefore,this subtle use of rhetorical moves and stance markers is related to different genres and writing purposes.The teaching significance of this research includes cultivating students’ science popularizing ability,improving their understanding of subject knowledge and its social relevance,and guiding students to better disseminate medical knowledge to the public.In addition,this study establishes the relationship between the two concepts of rhetorical moves and metadiscourse,which seem to be independent but are closely related in achieving communicative purposes.In terms of research methods,this study selects a mixed research method combining quantitative and qualitative methods to get a more comprehensive conclusion.For teachers,this study can provide teachers with references in the teaching of academic writing in order to achieve better teaching effects.