Friday Ideas: Movie Ads and Manuscripts

Movie advertisements can provide short texts that are both interesting to students and easily understood - even by beginners. Using movie ads can also be a nice way to sneak a little culture into a language lesson. Here is an activity idea that is adaptable to almost any language classroom:

1. Select two ads for two different films. The ads can be either print or video.

2. Have students view both ads, searching for words (or characters) that they already know within the ad.

3. Have students guess what they think the films are about - are they romantic films, action films, or dramas? Students can either talk about their guesses as a group (in the target language, of course), or they can write their answers down individually and then compare them.

4. Students can then choose a favorite ad.

Writing Extension:

Students pair up to write either a short dialogue for one of the movies, or to write an email to a friend in which they invite the friend to a showing of one of the movies.