Exploring Social and Cultural Themes Through Advertising in Chinese, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and Vietnamese Language Course Curricula

ThuyAnh T Nguyen, Asian Languages and Cultures | 2020-2021


We intend to develop a curricular approach to the integration of advertising media and media literacy into our language courses in Chinese, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, and Vietnamese at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels, in addition to addressing the particular needs and honoring the particular linguistic and cultural wealth of heritage language learners, students who are “raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken, who speaks or at least understands the language, and who are to some degree bilingual in that language” (Valdes 2000). Materials will reflect the current state of advertising and current campaigns in our respective languages and cultures, thus increasing their relevance to student lives to increase motivation and engagement with their learning.
As colleagues in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, we are forming a small collaborative group and we are committed to working together as a team to maximize our efforts, especially in the design, development and assessment of these materials.