This week was about archives.  I enjoy dissecting commercials.  It's a great way to get students to understand how much they really know about rhetoric and how to use rhetorical devices.  They see it everyday.  They hear it all the time.  All that repetition makes for the perfect learning tool.

There are many applications for using archives in an English as a Second Language classroom.  My classes are multilevel and, in some cases, multilingual, so there are always interesting answers to activities that ask for interpretation and analysis.  I once went over feeling words with a class that was predominately Hispanic and they had started to laugh when we got to the word "embarrassed."  In their culture, that term is close to their word for pregnant and it elicited giggles for the next few minutes.  Everyone, interprets and compares things to their own culture and upbringing.

It would be great to see their take on older commercials.  A lot of what they know about American culture and language, they get from t.v. and this is something they would be able to get into.  It is also good for listening exercises.  For higher level students that want to take the GED or upper level classes, they would get good practice in analysis and U.S. history.

For a reading/writing class, I could, definitely, use this for reading techniques.  When I was teaching implication and analysis of a work to students, they had to watch a few commercials and figure out what rhetorical devices were the ad companies using to get students to buy or use their product or service.  The biggest part was being able to tell what were these ads implying.  I like how this can really spark debates in the classroom.  Students understand the lesson so much better, when they put their heart and feelings into it.