The Three Minute Thesis in the Classroom

The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition is an annual academic speaking competition that challenges graduate students to present their thesis and its significance to a non-specialist audience in just three minutes. Heather Boldt focuses on how the 3MT can be used in an ESL or EAP classroom to improve students’ speaking skills.

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The Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition is an annual academic speaking competition that challenges graduate students to present their thesis and its significance to a non-specialist audience in just three minutes. In The Three Minute Thesis in the Classroom, author Heather Boldt focuses on how the 3MT can be used in an ESL or EAP classroom to improve students' speaking skills, particularly about research. This Brief Instructional Guide uses data from the author's corpus of 3MT transcripts to reveal the six moves typical of this type of presentation and then provides instructors with a variety of classroom applications in the areas of vocabulary, pronunciation, describing research to non-specialists, and effective slide design.