Learning Tip

Hi, I am Simon Gillow. I’ve been an English language teacher for about fifteen years. I like teaching English because I like languages. And I’ve lived in many different countries and learned languages in lots of different ways.

Advertising is everywhere and a lot of advertising is in English. Even if the product is not an English product, they often sell it using English words because they think it makes it more attractive to customers. This means that if we’re in the street, we can usually see a lot more English than we think we can.

Look at the posters on the billboards. Look at the publicity that people give you. Sometimes these things are in English. Go to the tourist information office. Take the leaflets that they produce for tourists in English. Sometimes these things have lots of really useful expressions. Because you know the country, because you can know the product and maybe you’ve seen the product as well in your own language; this type of vocabulary work can really help us experience real English.

Very often, they use language in surprising ways in advertising, particularly good for things like superlatives or comparatives where they make something sound “the best” or “better than”. This type of language is particularly useful to all of us. So advertising can help there.

The other thing advertising can help with of course, is it helps us understand a wide range of vocabulary related to specific topics. For example, supermarkets publicity often helps us with learning food words. We can see the pictures and we can read the words, particularly if these are foreign products, or the product is a local product, it’s also in English as well.

So all kinds of advertising and publicity can help us and provide us with lots of opportunities for improving our vocabulary and also understanding some of the normal grammar and expressions that English speakers use every day.

Glossary

billboard (n.) - a very large board on which advertisements are shown

publicity (n.) - information, material, or other means used to publicize something or somebody

leaflets (n.) - a piece of paper which gives you information or advertises something

superlative (n.) - expressing the highest degree of grammatical comparison of an adjective or adverb; eg. the best, the cheapest, the healthiest

comparative (n.) - describes the form of an adjective or adverb that expresses an increase in quality, quantity, or degree; eg. better, cheaper, healthier

Discuss

Advertising is indeed everywhere. Share with us what you have learnt in advertisements this week.