For April, I have planned a month of advert-themed prompts on Infinite ELT Ideas. Here is the first:
I saw these two adverts very soon one after the other before a film at the cinema last week. They advertise two famous newspapers in the UK, The Sun and The Guardian.
While writing this post, I also found a satirical reworking of The Guardian video as if made by The Sun.
What would you do with these videos (separately or together) in your classroom? You can make any assumptions you like about the context they are used in. Post your ideas in the comments below. All ideas are welcome (there are no wrong answers!)
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Comments on: "Newspaper adverts" (5)
if my students were media students i would get them to search editorials from the sun and guardian (assume they would have access to relevant database), categorise editorials into various sections e.g UK domestic, foreign policy etc and do a content analysis and see if there are any differences =O.
and i would maybe add this music video – Love Me I Am a Liberal (Phil Ochs) 😉 –
cheers
I just found this blog about a series of lessons in a primary school using the idea of the Three Little Pigs story and the Guardian advert: http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/mar/29/three-little-pigs-school-journalism
Sandy
Two great commercials, Sandy. Teaching high school ESL English where media analysis is part of the curriculum, I’d start out by analyzing the two commercials’ use of cinematic techniques (half the class for each commercial, and then having them present their findings for one another, two and two – or posting findings in the class Facebook-group). Based on this analysis, I’d ask the students for their impressions of these two newspapers: Target groups? Types of news stories brought in them? Etc.
After this, much like ESLNotes’ comment above, I’d ask students to research and compare content from the two newspapers (from different sections of the newspapers, again divided among the students), present their findings and reflect on whether or not these findings correspond to the conclusions from the analysis of the two commercials.
Finally, I’d select one article from each of the two newspapers (preferably on the same topic) and do an in-depth analysis of language, tone, elements of style etc. aimed at practicing analysis of non-fiction texts and language analysis. Hope it’s okay if I use these two commercials in a blog post of my own.
I finally got round to using something from Infinite in my own lessons 🙂
On Thursday I was covering an upper intermediate class and decided to experiment with the Guardian Open Journalism/Three Little Pigs advert. This is how the lesson went:
– I drew a pink oval on it’s side and invited suggestions as to what it was.
– I added a smaller pink oval inside and invited more suggestions.
– When I added two dots side-by-side in the smaller pink oval, the students knew it was a pig.
– I then drew two more pigs and asked the students what this made them think of.
– They said the ‘Three Little Pigs’, so I asked them to work in pairs and tell each other what they could remember of the story (they were all adults: 2 South Korean men, 1 Japanese woman and 1 Italian man)
– Clarifying a few words like sticks, straw and wolf, we came up with a version of the story we were all happy with. I introduced the phrases:
“Little pig, little pig, let me in”
“Not by the hair of my chinny, chin chin”
“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.”
– I introduced the idea of the bad guys v. good guys and talked briefly about newspaper reporting and bias. The students had to think of things a newspaper might say in support of and against the pigs and wolf.
– We then watched the video. The students had to identify as many arguments on each side as they could.
– As it was quite difficult, we repeated the video a few times and discussed the alternative version of the story.
– We started to write a transcript of the story with the students in control of the video, but only managed about half of it as we ran out of time.
All the way through the students were motivated, and they were really proud of themselves when they could transcribe something which they initially found quite difficult to understand.
If I had had more time, we would have moved on to talking more about the freedom of the press and about the importance and downsides of investigative journalism.
Sandy
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