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November 29, 2005 |
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Honesty and Clarity in Advertising and the Media “For regularly providing a penetrating critique of obfuscation, lying, and distortion of the media, corporations, and politicians,” Jon Stewart and the entire cast of The Daily Show are winners of the 2005 NCTE Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language (G). This week's resources suggest ways to ask students to make similar explorations of the messages behind public language. The English Journal article "Doublespeak Detection for the English Classroom" (M-S-C) explores examples from literature, newspapers, and advertisements. Advertisements can provide a fertile source for examples. Ask students to sift through and analyze simple advertisements with the ReadWriteThink lesson Investigating Junk Mail: Negotiating Critical Literacy at the Mailbox (E), which asks questions about what's in a text, what's not there, and who a text is for. For more activities for elementary students, check out the Language Arts article "Children's Everyday Literacies: Intersections of Popular Culture and Language Arts Instruction" (E). The Voices from the Middle article "Improving Reading Comprehension by Using Media Literacy Activities" (M) challenges educators to find creative ways to build connections between kids' worlds and the work we do in classrooms. The article shares a sequence of classroom engagements that moved students from film to literature to writing. To explore advertisement's use of doublespeak with older students, look to the analytical techniques outlined in the Teaching English in the Two-Year College article "Advertising and Interpretive Analysis: Developing Reading, Thinking, and Writing Skills in the Composition Course" (S-C). NOTE: Free access to journal articles mentioned in this Inbox is provided
for 21 days. After this free access period expires, articles are available
to journal subscribers only. This Inbox Idea was published11-29-2005. |
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