Week 10

Another week gone by. This week we finished the activities and contents related to humor and stand up comedy. here's the last clip we watched in class about euphemisms:





On Wednesday and Friday we continued with your class presentations and finally on Friday we started a new topic on telephone fraud, which we will finish on Monday. On Monday, Katie will be back to visit our classroom and she will bring an activity to review and close the subject of American humor. 

On course management, here is the update of the entries recorded in the extensive listening form. With this list you can keep track of which and how many videos you have already done. I'd like to highlight that by this date you should have, on average, around 12 to 14 entries on record. This is not always the case. 

Finally, I have already updated the options for the speech assignment. You can check the updated guidelines here. 

Week 5

Last week we covered persuasive techniques in advertising. Advertisers use different strategies and method to convince people to buy their products and brands. Most strategies fall in one or more of these domains: a) establishing credibility (ethos); b) appealing to emotion (pathos); or c) appealing to reason (logos).

Within these three broad appeal, there are sub-techniques such as the use of loaded language, the use of celebrities, the bandwagon effect, transfer of feelings and so on. These are some examples of very persuasive ads we watched in class.




This one used a celebrity, bribery, appeals to credibility (Stratford experts) and ego.



This one appeals to chauvinism and manliness (real men eat meat), humor and uses a catchy song.

This Monday we will have a brief review activity on advertising with Katie and a some final comments on the topic. Remember that this Wednesday you will start with your first in class presentations.