The 30-second Ad in the Classroom: Using TV Commercials to Liven Things Up

Dr. Phil McCasland

Prof. McCasland presented at our chapter to answer this question. He established what constitutes effective language activities when using TV commercials and showed what roles the teacher can take during those activities. He recommended us to use TV commercials as an accessory to regular English lessons. He mentioned that TV commercials provide linguistic and cultural content for communicational and creative language use in the classroom. Students are encouraged to develop their skills in listening and speaking. There is visual and audio input through a short story from TV commercials. TV commercials have advantages for English learning students. Most importantly, they are entertaining and humorous. As a teacher, we all know how it is difficult to motivate and encourage students to use English and try out their learned utterances. In order to facilitate the student’s communicative competence, teachers can use TV commercials to get attention from students. TV commercials also provide authentic language and culture values. They encourage students to use their creativity and imagination through various activities. Finally, TV commercials allow students to develop their critical thinking. Participants were provided with numerous useful URLs for internet sites for classroom use of TV commercials.