The Power of Advertising

Adverts are a great talking point- we can all remember a few weird and wonderful ones that made us scratch our heads and wonder what on earth they were about. A few years ago I was at the cinema and amongst the pre film advertisements (which seemed to go on for nearly the same length of the film!) was an advert for OPI nail varnish, in which a horse enters in dance battles with various female dancers.  For me, the advert was inspired and as such it was the springboard for the lesson in this post. The lesson was developed for a group of advanced learners who are studying without a coursebook in their final semester at a language school. All of the lessons for this group (many of which I will include on this site) are designed to promote free production and use of English in natural contexts without a hidden grammatical agenda, however you can also adapt parts of this lesson for other levels, to complement course book topics and activities. 
I have included examples of print adverts that can be used as discussion points, however these were intended for a Brazilian audience and may need to be substituted for others, should you feel that they may not be suitable for the culture in which you work. 
If you try out this lesson with your students, I'd love to hear about it, so please leave a comment below with feedback.

Advert 1- OPI
Advert 2- Cadbury

COMPLETE Lesson Plan download (via Google docs)