English is the international language used to communicate with people all over the world. Therefore, English is important to learn and master.
Especially in modern times, you can take advantage of rapidly developing technology to learn English easily and quickly without spending much money.
One of the best media for learning is from an English YouTube channel. Most people use it as a medium for learning various languages, especially English. You can access various kinds of videos on the YouTube platform to help improve your English. For example, you can learn English from music videos and commercials.
Maybe you never thought that advertising could be an effective way to learn English. That’s because commercial videos are short, entertaining, and Informative.
Here's a complete guide on how to learn new English skills through commercials.
How Commercials Can Improve Your English
The commercial is a way to introduce certain products or services to the public. There are also many kinds of commercials, such as animated commercials, print commercials, display commercials, advertorial commercials, and electronic commercials.
Commercials use persuasive language, which contains words of invitation that can attract audiences and encourage them to make a purchase.
In other words, advertisements show polite, attractive, targeted language and contain suggestive words.
Not only that, commercials are typically shorts that last about 30 seconds to one minute. They can also easily show the culture of a country so it’s easy for you to learn about English’s culture and also may help you practice essential English skills.
This can be an effective and great way to improve your English skills. You will also be able to broaden your vocabulary in English by watching product videos ads.
This is especially important for beginner English learners, who may not yet be ready to learn from longer content.
5 Steps to Learn English through Commercials
A brief to learn English such as commercials
1. Watch the Subtitles
The first thing you can do is pay attention and read the English subtitles. If you hear something you don't recognize, reading it in a caption can help you understand it. The subtitle can also help you identify words to search for.
Click the “CC” button at the bottom right of the screen on your YouTube viewing mode to access English subtitles. Subtitles also help you improve your English comprehension skills effectively.
2. Learn With the Scene
This is the most interesting part about learning English through advertisements because you can learn through the storyline in every scene of the advertisement. This will help to improve your English communication skills.
Watching online videos is an interesting and very fun way to learn English. Video advertisements are especially packed with storylines that attract the audience’s attention with stunning visuals so that it will be easy for you to understand, remember and learn.
3. Find the Meaning
The next step is to find the meaning of every word that you don’t understand in every scene of the conversation. That way, you can understand the use of phrases in every sentence. This also helps you to enrich your vocabulary in English.
4. Try to Repeat
After you understand the use of every sentence and the meaning of the whole conversation. It is best to repeat their conversation so that you have better pronunciation. This will also improve your speaking skills.
Continuously repeating every spoken conversion on the commercial might sound weird, but it works effectively in improving your English speaking ability. Commercials with short duration allow you to learn better English in every way.
5. Watch Without Subtitles
Lastly, you can watch the commercial from the beginning and without subtitles. It will help you improve your capabilities in understanding English and a great way to check how far you have come.
Moreover, watching commercials without subtitles may also help you to practice your English listening skills. This might be hard at first but once you get used to it, you will be able to communicate with native speakers fluently.
8 Best Commercials Examples
Now we move forward with the best commercial examples to help you understand English better. These are the eight best commercials that you can use to learn English in a fun and entertaining way.
1. Specsavers
Specsavers is one of the funniest commercials that can be a good way for you to learn English. It is about a man who should have gone to the sauna but instead wanders into the kitchen. Then, the slogan comes at the end "he should've gone to Specsavers''
This commercial is the best choice to help you practice perfect infinitives with modal verbs. You can also pay attention to the subtitles and their speaking ability to help you understand the pronunciation better.
2. Chupa Chups
What do you see in this ad? Yes, at the bottom corner is the words "It's sugar-free." This ad has an interesting way of showing the culture of the English people with the slogan "It's sugar-free" and also visually appealing by showing the viewers of ants avoiding lollipops.
Interestingly, you will learn more about the English idioms which contains meaning behind a word and the culture of westerners through commercials
The commercial shows that reading food label information first is important because it helps to keep you safe from incorrect claims and make the right decision in choosing good nutritions and health.
3. Got Milk?
The next ad is Got Milk. This commercial is hilarious and has successfully attracted people's attention. You can pay attention to the message behind the milk mustache and funny scenes that give you a new English ability to interpret the message behind a story.
So, Got Milk Ads can be a means of learning your English in improving your vocabulary, speaking, listening and other English skills.
4. Blitz German Coastguard
The next best commercial you should watch is Blitz German Coast. This ad is a good way to expand your vocabulary that is often used on flights.
This ad will teach you new English skills that are not often used daily but will be useful when you travel to various cities and countries.
For example, the pilot says, “Mayday, Mayday.” This is an aviation terminology for an emergency procedure used internationally as a distress signal in radio communication voice procedures.
5. Kleenex Tissues
This is a commercial for Kleenex tissues. The storyline of this commercial is about a new teacher starting her first day of work at a new school. She receives encouragement from her students.
As we can see here, Kleenex believes that caring for others is important to boost their confidence.
There are some tips that you should pay deep attention to in helping you learn English, including the emotion of the new teachers, what English tenses the commercial uses, and the imperative mood “Remember…” and “Enjoy it!”
6. Yuck
It is such a heartwarming and funny video that has captured the children talking about what foods they dislike. However, Tyson Chicken Nuggets are introduced as a portion of food that every kid loves.
While watching the advertisement, you should prepare yourself with these questions to help you practice English better from the commercials.
- Identify the subject that you hear in the commercials
- Try naming the foods that you like and dislike in a complete sentence
- Find the adjectives
- Different ways the word “like” can be used: “I like/do not like” vs. “it looks like…”
7. Weetabix - Driving Instructors
Weetabix commercial is another choice for you to learn and improve your English skills with an English song that the instructor is singing.
The storyline of this ad is hilarious. It is about a driving instructor who is scared of testing people in driving. So, he believes that when he eats Weetabix, he will survive.
This ad has a unique song that can help you improve your listening skills and enrich your vocabulary in the English language.
8. Sainsbury’s - Mog’s Christmas Calamity
Sainsbury's commercial has received a huge success. It shows its adorable character Mog that caught people's attention. This is a good way for you to learn English with commercials presented by storytelling.
This commercial tells about the cute Mog's who accidentally destroys the whole house. It shows a quite sad storyline with a message behind it.
Takeaway
For some people learning English is not easy. It takes a variety of ways to successfully communicate fluently in English. You can follow the step-by-step above to guide you in learning English in an entertaining way.
When you want to improve your English skills, you need to be able to analyze the types of persuasive strategies and the language used by advertising to negotiate with people. That way, you can update your English skills and take them to a higher level.
Now it is time for you to take real practice in learning English through commercials, and interestingly, you can look at the English words that come from Hungarian, you will be surprised.
Author Bio
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award winning explainer video production company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
Twitter: @breadnbeyond
Email: andre@breadnbeyond.com
LinkedIn: Andre Oentoro