John Lewis Christmas Adverts

Level: Pre-intermediate with lots of vocabulary support.
Vocabulary assistance required for the newspaper articles.

For me the Christmas adverts are a part of the beginning of Christmas. Tonight is the airing of this year's John Lewis Christmas advert.

Depending on time in your class you could view as many or as few videos as you wish. I recommend at least two to enable compare and contrast activities.

General warmers to cover the vocabulary of Christmas and personalise the activity;

• What is your idea of Christmas?
• What does it mean to you?
• What traditions do you have in your family?
• possible answers: happiness, love, family, holiday, presents, games

Before watching a/each video ask the following questions;

• Who is the main character?
• Where are they?
• What are they doing?
• What does Christmas mean for them?
• What relation does the music have to the story?

After watching the videos;

• Your students can compare their answers.
• Have open class feedback.
• Ask students in pairs to re-tell the stories in the videos.
• Why are the adverts so sucessful?
• If you have watched two or more: how do they differ or how are they similar? Compare and contrast them.

Once you have watched a video or videos you can support this lesson with some reading activities from real newspaper articles. I've included  some links for The Guardian and the BBC. Many more can be found on the internet.

1. T pre-read the articles, identify any difficult words for your students and pre-teach them or phrasal verbs etc.
2. What is the main focus for the video?
3. SS read the article to find the answer.
4. SS compare answers.
5. Open class feedback.
6. Why are the adverts so sucessful, according to the newspaper?
7. How do these versions of Christmas relate to yours?

Supporting links;

The Guardian article "John Lewis Christmas ads: how they evolved from 2007 to 2013" and video. 
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/nov/12/john-lewis-christmas-ads-2007-2013

The Guardian "Monty the penguin: John Lewis unveils its Christmas ad – video"
http://www.theguardian.com/business/video/2014/nov/06/monty-penguin-john-lewis-christmas-advert-video

A BBC News article "Ad Breakdown: John Lewis tries a penguin" (Int +)
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29906347

John Lewis YouTube channel: for all videos including the making of and other John Lewis adverts.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa1yUHQmV6Z0PpAUtfgNd9g

The songs used in the adverts are named under the videos, on the YouTube channel
Some can be found at http://lyricstraining.com/ providing different levels to practise.