PoLT Online Professional Learning Resource – Principle 4

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Vignettes – Middle Years – The cultural context of media texts

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Example

The Cultural Context of Media Texts

Voula’s year 8 class is investigating the impact of advertising. Through formative assessment and ‘tuning in’ she notices that while they superficially analyse the persuasive techniques used in local TV advertisements, they are too close to the products and seem unable to move to deeper understandings of the genre. She decides to use ads from other cultural contexts so the students can more objectively deconstruct these texts. Her resource materials stem from Voices & Visions of Indonesia, Japan, China and India. The students divide into 4 heterogeneous cooperative groups, each selecting a country. Voula encourages them to mind-map their knowledge of their selected culture and popular products etc.

They then watch 2 advertisements and discuss similarities and differences between these and ads for similar Australian products. Students speculate about the values of the target audience and further explore hypotheses through examination of other contemporary texts on the CDs. They access the Coca Cola website www.cocacola.com which shows how a globally available product is advertised in over 200 different countries to meet the demands of local cultures. Voula encourages each group to use graphic organisers such as cluster diagrams and cause and effect diagrams to help them organise, remember and understand their findings. The students then view a current Australian advertisement. In group and whole class discussion, the students apply synthesised understandings by analysing its possible success in another cultural context.