Binge watching good commercials can be just as entertaining as the shows! Thanks to the #langchat community, here are some great videos to get you started. Plus I added a few follow up activities that you can use immediately.

“I can” Statements

Here are some generic “I can” statements that could be used with most of these commercials.

• I can describe a commercial.
• I can tell how a commercial makes me feel.
• I can give my opinion about a commercial.
• I can identify products and practices from the culture.
• I can explain how a commercial reflects the perspectives of the culture.

Note: If you keep this in the target language, then you are doing so much to support our 5 C’s! Just think about that for a minute… Communication, Culture, Connections, Community, and Comparisons.

Authentic Resources

I encourage you to watch the videos, especially if you do not speak the language fluently. It reminds me of what it is to be a novice learner and how I need to adapt my tasks/activities to meet their proficiency level.

French

Merci to Wendy Farabaugh for sharing this sweet one.

Great advice from Megan Sulewski who suggested the above video – Search “Noēl” on the site CulturePub to find some great ones to use in French. http://www.culturepub.fr/?s=noel Merci Megan!

Did you notice the “Pour vote santé” disclosure at the bottom? That alone can lead to some interesting conversations about regulations in France.

Spanish

Pick and read some of the comments under the video too! Maybe a little Agree/Disagree activity can be done with those. Also the past “lotería” commercial are great too. I devoted a whole day to just talking about this tradition. For intermediate levels, this site has lots of great articles that will prompt some opinions.

German

I don’t know if I’m mad, happy, or what after watching that! Danke to Karla Garza for sharing it.

Communicative Activities

These are all different ways you can get more learning from the commercials. I love these because they are easily adapted for any topic. They are definitely a part of my teacher toolbox.

I can tell someone about an awesome holiday commercial.

Copy and paste this image to your favorite program to print.

Copy and paste to your favorite program to add text boxes and to print.

Megan blogged about using a similar form before, and I just gave it a holiday twist and put it in the past tense. This has been perfect for supporting novices and emerging intermediates to get them describing. If you are not a Spanish teacher, try to figure all of those out. The icons are pretty powerful in this format. (If anyone wants to translate it, I’ll format it! Just email – creativelanguageclass@gmail.com)

Grouping cards with pictures. Never know how they will pick up a new word!

Here’s one way to do a lesson to support the “I can” statement. I prefer a jigsaw strategy to give this lesson a reason to communicate about the commercial.

1. Each student draws a grouping card.
2. Students group up based on their cards.
3. Each group will watch a different commercial together. (Usually I had 6 groups of 5 so I need 6 different commercials.)
4. Then they will complete the form together.
5. Tell them to grab their video description. Regroup them so their is one person representing each original group/commercial in each new group.
6. They take turns to tell their new group about their commercials. They should try to convince the group to want to see it.
7. At the end, the groups vote for which commercial sounds the most interesting to watch.
8. Watch the commercials as a class.
9. You could go into letting them give more details to add to the original description.

I can talk about how a commercial connects to the culture.

Another way to use the same commercials is to focus on the culture. If they can identify cultural products and practices, then it helps them to connect to the unique perspectives. Read this “Aspects of Culture” post to find out more about that.

Three Kings’ Day with a Career Connection is another post with ideas about watching commercials to identify persuasive techniques. ELA connection!

Share Below

I hope this gave you a few practical lessons to do with those great commercials!

Do you have any authentic resources that would fit this challenge? 

Or…

Do you have any related personal experiences?

PLEASE share below in the comments!