THE PEDAGOGICAL POWER OF COMMERCIALS IN TEACHING FRENCH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (FOS) TO IMPROVE VARIOUS COMPETENCES
E. Velescu, R. Mihalache, E. Petrea, C. Costuleanu
Commercials are crafted to capture attention and generate interest, making them ideal educational tools. This text explores how advertisements can be effectively integrated into French for Specific Purposes (FOS) instruction, emphasizing their educational benefits and providing practical examples.
Commercials are authentic documents, designed by marketing experts to sell ideas or products. Their dynamic nature makes them valuable pedagogical tools, suitable for diverse teaching objectives, such as the communicative competencies, by describing images, writing advertising slogans, presenting advertisement scenarios.
These activities foster creative and precise expression, enhancing vocabulary and writing skills. The linguistic competencies can be also developed, helping students to use advertising-specific vocabulary, employ complex sentences and analyzing lexical units and creative expressions in advertisements aids in mastering advanced language structures. Advertisements provide cultural insights, allowing students to discover commercials from different countries and languages, to compare advertising strategies across cultures and to improve this intercultural dimension by offering varied perspectives and promoting cultural awareness.
In a consumer-driven society, understanding advertisements helps students to comprehend how advertisements work and to create counter-advertising campaigns. These activities develop critical thinking and media literacy, enabling students to decode and critique advertising messages.
We present in this paper some examples of a pedagogical sequences regarding commercials and their didactic exploitation. Integrating advertisements into FOS curricula makes learning dynamic, engaging, and relevant, preparing students to navigate a media-saturated world with critical awareness.
Keywords: Advertising, teaching languages, learners competencies, didactics.