Commercials as Quizzes

How about using this commercial for a quiz?!? 

Alison Nelson and I are presenting a session called "Using commercials in the Spanish classroom" at MaFLA and NHAWLT in a few weeks and I have been working a lot on the presentation. The session should be fun and participants will walk away with a lot of ideas and worksheets! Commercials are a great way to expose students to short, engaging, comprehensible authentic resources. They are also an easy, fun way to increase their listening proficiency. Students also see some aspects culture (depending on the commercial) and hear a variety of accents if you use commercials frequently.

For Spanish 3, my school use the second half of Realidades 2 textbook, so I am tied to that book and its chapters. We are also reading Robo en la noche on the side (love it, highly recommended). This semester in Spanish 3, I am trying to give one "commercial quiz" per unit. The commercial quizzes will be directly related to the Realidades 2 units, and I will be posting them here as the semester goes on.

Basically the "commercial quiz" is an interpretive assessment in which students have to answer some questions about what they see in the commercial, listen and fill in the blanks of missing words (they don't have to get all of them), and then answer some questions about what the commercial is saying. I am also trying to include some cultural comparison questions (keeping the AP Spanish presentational section in mind). I let them listen to and watch the commercials as many times as they want (limit being that they have to finish by the end of class). The quizzes take about 30-45 minutes and are perfect to do when doing a speaking assessment on the same day.

Some things that I found to be helpful before doing this type of quiz:

• Do a similar activity together in class or for homework. If this is the first time they are being exposed to this type of activity, it can feel very difficult.
• Remind students to listen and look for cognates.
• Tell students to watch the commercial 2-3 times without even looking at the worksheet. 
• Keep the answers simple! Don't over-think!
• Explain (or remind) to them the difference between interpreting and translating. This is an interpretive assessment and they should focus on getting the main idea. They do not need to understand all of it.

This was the first "commercial quiz" that students did at the end of chapter 5A called: Un acto heroico. The had already seen two other similar commercials and done similar worksheets (here and here).

This is the second commercial quiz that students did at the end of chapter 5B Un accidente. They had already seen this commercial and similar ones (see Zachary Jones' Aununcios: ¿Qué le duele? + Partes del cuerpo). Click here for quiz.

Here is one that I am looking forward to doing. I think students will be able to relate to this one! I might actually give it as a Tarea Semanal option because I am not sure it will fit with any of the chapters for Realidades. Click here for worksheet.

I also used this catchy commercial in Spanish 2 this year to review school supplies. Students liked it and some even wanted that to be our "song of the week". Click here for worksheet.

Here is a very basic rubric that I created to grade these quizzes. I am sure that this will be improved, but this is a start.

I will be sharing our MaFLA presentation and all of the commercial worksheets here in late October. Two other places to find commercial transcripts are Zambombazo (tag: publicidad) and in this collaborative document (started by Sara Cottrell) with tons of commercial transcripts.