Teacher’s Notes for IELTS Speaking Unit 20: Advertising

The materials for the following activities include:

1) IELTS Speaking Task Sheet Week 20
2) Worksheet 1: Vocabulary Revision
3) Worksheet 2: Part 2 Speaking Practice Test

Pre-Lesson Activities

The following pre-lesson activities will give students the opportunity to learn or revise topic
vocabulary on the subject of ‘advertising’. Prior to the lesson, as a homework activity, ask
students to do the following:

• read through the vocabulary page on the subject of ‘advertising’:


http://www.ieltsspeaking.co.uk/ielts-advertising-vocabulary/

Lesson Activities

1. Worksheet 1



Exercise 1 is a revision exercise. Students can work in pairs or small groups and
match the words in each column to form expressions commonly used to talk about
advertising. The answers appear below.



Exercise 2 is designed to give students the opportunity to use many of these words in
a role play. Depending on the numbers of students in your class, create groups of
between 3-6 students. Explain that each group represents a different advertising
agency and they are about to compete with each other for a new contract with a
company making luxury chocolate cakes. Here are two suggested ideas for running
this role play.



A) Group presentations. 

Explain that the group will be presenting their campaign to other students in the class,
who will score the presentation on how good they think the campaign is. Each group
should be given at least 15 minutes to plan their campaign and how they are going to
present it to the class. Encourage them to use the expressions from Exercise 1 in their
presentation. 

When all the groups are ready, have each one present their ideas at the front of the
class. Students can then vote on which campaign they like the best.



B) Group interviews.

The same procedure as above, only instead of a presentation, each group are
questioned by the class about their campaign. This approach will give added practice
in questioning and might suit students who would prefer not to give presentations. 

As with the presentations, when the interviews are complete, the class votes on which
group have had the best ideas.






Published by Flo-Joe for ieltsspeaking.co.uk

2. Worksheet 2/IELTS Speaking Task Sheet Week 20



1) Tell the students they are going to talk about an advert they have seen that they
thought was particularly effective. If you have access to the Internet in your class and a
data projector you could introduce this activity by showing an advert that might engage
the students. There are a wide range on Youtube, such as this well-known one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo



Whether you are able to show an advert or not, it will help the students frame their
ideas if you allow time for a discussion on what makes an advert effective. Hopefully
students will suggest some of the following as well as offering ideas of their own:



It must stand out and grab the viewers attention straight away.

It knows who the audience is and targets them.

It might show them how their life would be better with this product or service.

It should be memorable.



2) Students prepare their long turn. Allow five minutes for students to come up with
ideas for their talk. Encourage them to try answering some of the questions presented
in the worksheet or to come up with questions of their own to address in their talk.


3. Worksheet 2: Creating Emphasis




This task lends itself to the occasional use of structures to create emphasis. For
example:

What I liked about this advert was …

The reason this adverts stood out for me was …

The thing that impressed me most about this advert was …



There is a clear overview of cleft sentences and their uses on the BBC Learning
English site (a link to which also appears in the worksheet):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv149.shtml








Published by Flo-Joe for ieltsspeaking.co.uk

Answers to Worksheet 1 Exercise 1

brand awareness
celebrity endorsement
classified ads
cold call
commercial break
go viral
junk mail
launch a product
mailing list
mass media
place an advert
press release
prime time
sales page
word of mouth
social media
target audience






Published by Flo-Joe for ieltsspeaking.co.uk