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Stephanie Knight is the Language Technology Specialist for CASLS at the University of Oregon. This activity was developed in order to meet the various needs of the students in her International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme Spanish course at Hillsboro High School, an urban high school in Nashville, Tennessee. It can be adapted to fit other languages and levels.

This activity aims at developing speaking and critical thinking skills among intermediate-high and advanced-low students. Insofar as students are led to consider varying levels of acculturation in differing generations of heritage learners, this activity is appropriate for classes of heritage learners and for classes with students studying Spanish as a foreign language. In completing the activity, students are engaged in reading, listening, and speaking skills.

Mode(s): Presentational Speaking, Interpretive Listening, Interpretive Reading

Objectives:

• Students will understand the importance of cultural awareness when designing effective advertising campaigns.
• Students will understand that translation is an ineffective means of targeting an existing advertising campaign to a Spanish-speaking audience.
• Students will be able to create their own commercials tailored to first generation immigrants and third or fourth generation immigrants.
• Students will develop their persuasive and narrative speaking skills.

Resources- Advertising PowerPoint, Handout 1, Handout 2 (English versions available here:  PowerPoint, Handout 1, Handout 2)

Procedure:

1. Through the use of a PowerPoint presentation, students are introduced to the concept of advertisers targeting a specific subset of the general population. In this overview, the power of persuasion inherent in advertisements and the economic impact of Latino spenders in the United States are discussed. In addition, students are drawn to consider general characteristics of the Latino population that advertisers must keep in mind, and students are introduced to advertisements that have failed given the misguided hope that simple translation into Spanish would be a sufficient vehicle to tailor ads to the United States’ Spanish-speaking population.
2. The next step is to give students Handout 1 that they use to analyze State Farm advertisements. Two commercials are directed toward Spanish speakers in the United States, while the other is tailored to English speakers.
3. Next, students are put into teams of 3-4 in which they prepare (by outlining in lieu of script writing) two commercials for the same product or service--one commercial targets first-generation immigrants, and one targets immigrants who are more acculturated into the United States’ mainstream culture (third or fourth generation). Handout 2
4. Students present their commercials. While the teams are presenting, the rest of the class must guess the desired audience of each advertisement. In addition, each student should pick one student presenting to evaluate with regards to language output and language control.

It is recommended that students record their commercials and do a self-evaluation and reflection in which they focus on three strengths that they discovered in listening to the recording. Remind them to cite proof of the strengths and to use them as part of an improvement plan. The students may wish to also work on 1-2 weaknesses in their improvement plans.

Adaptations: While students originally completed this activity by presenting each commercial live in the classroom, the commercials could be pre-recorded. This activity could be easily adapted to lower-level students by allowing them to write a script instead of an outline of the commercials. Such an adaptation would allow students to rely less upon spontaneous output than they would in the activity as presently created.