How Do They Do It? Analyzing Ads

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Unit 2 • What Influences My Choices?

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2.4 How Do They Do It? Analyzing Ads

Advertising Techniques

1. To understand how advertisers market to teens, it is important to understand the many persuasive advertising techniques they use. Read the descriptions of advertising techniques that follow. Then paraphrase and create a visual representation of each technique. Your visualization may include both words and symbols.

2. As you read about the techniques, think about the cause-and-effect relationship in advertising. For example, with bandwagon, the persuasion may be that “Everyone is buying this product (cause), so you should buy this product, too (effect).” With the avant-garde appeal, it might be, “This product is the newest on the market (cause), and you should be one of the first to have it (effect).”

Technique Paraphrase Visualize

Bandwagon: Advertisers make it seem that everyone is buying this product, so you feel you should buy it, too. For example, an ad for a new video game may claim: “The ultimate online game is sweeping the nation! Everyone is playing! Join the fun!” This statement is intended to make you feel left out if you are not playing.

Avant-Garde: This technique is the opposite of bandwagon. Advertisers make it seem that the product is so new that you will be the first on the block to have it. The idea is that only supercool people like you will even know about this product.

Testimonials: Advertisers use both celebrities and regular people to endorse products. For example, a famous actor might urge consumers to buy a certain car. Pay close attention: sometimes the celebrity does not actually say that he or she uses the product.

WORD CONNECTIONS

Etymology

The word bandwagon comes from the wagon that carried the band in political victory parades. People who joined the cause once it became successful were described as having jumped on the bandwagon.

A C T I V I T Y

Learning Targets

• Identify techniques used in advertisements.

• Determine the purpose of persuasive advertisements and analyze how they use language to achieve that purpose.

• Write a thesis statement for a paragraph describing the effectiveness of advertising techniques.

Preview

In this activity, you will look at ads to analyze the techniques advertisers use to sell products.

Learning Strategies Paraphrasing

Visualizing Graphic Organizer

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SpringBoard^® English Language Arts Grade 7

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Technique Paraphrase Visualize

Facts and Figures: Statistics, percentages, and numbers are used to convince you that this product is better or more effective than another product. However, be aware of what the numbers are actually saying. What does “30 percent more effective than the leading brand” really mean?

Transfer: To recognize this technique, pay attention to the background of the ad or to the story of the commercial. The transfer technique wants you to associate the good feelings created in the ad with the product. For example, a commercial showing a happy family eating soup may want you to associate a feeling of comfort and security with the company’s soup products.

My Notes

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3. What advertising techniques might you see together in one ad? Why would they work well together to influence an audience?

4. As you look at print, online, or television advertisements, analyze the use of advertising techniques. Circle the technique(s) used in the ads and provide evidence for each technique used in the graphic organizer that follows.

Advertisement Persuasive Techniques + Evidence from Ad Source:

Product:

Target Audience:

Bandwagon:

Avant-Garde:

Testimonials:

Facts and Figures:

Transfer:

Source:

Product:

Target Audience:

Bandwagon:

Avant-Garde:

Testimonials:

Facts and Figures:

Transfer:

Source:

Product:

Target Audience:

Bandwagon:

Avant-Garde:

Testimonials:

Facts and Figures:

Transfer:

Stop here on 1/12:

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5. Quickwrite: Think about an advertisement that you consider interesting and effective. You might consider if you or someone you know would buy this product based on the advertisement. Which persuasive technique does the advertiser use successfully? What is the cause-and-effect relationship being suggested? Why do you think that particular technique was selected for the advertisement?

Informational Writing

In contrast to narrative, whose purpose is to tell a story, the primary purpose of informational writing is to provide information or an explanation. The introduction of an informational essay typically includes the thesis statement.

6. Look at the following thesis statement for an informational essay about the bandwagon advertising technique. Is this a strong thesis statement? Why or why not?

Some advertisers use the bandwagon technique.

7. A strong thesis statement goes beyond stating a topic. It also tells the reader about your opinion or commentary on the topic. Brainstorm ways to improve the bandwagon thesis statement by responding to the following questions.

Advertisers use the bandwagon technique. Why?

Advertisers use the bandwagon technique. How?

Advertisers use the bandwagon technique. Who is their audience?

8. Use the ideas you brainstormed to create a strong thesis statement.

Check Your Understanding

Select one of the advertisements you identified in Step 4. Write a thesis statement that explains how the advertisement tries to influence its target audience. Be sure to:

• State the topic of the essay.

• Express a point of view or commentary on the topic.

LITERARY

Informational writing is a form of writing whose purpose is to explain or inform.

A thesis statement is a sentence, usually in the introduction of an essay, that states the writer’s position or opinion on the topic of the essay. A thesis statement should go beyond telling the reader the topic of the essay.

It should tell the reader what the writer thinks about the topic.

VO C A BU LA RY

My Notes

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Which Claims to Believe

A C T I V I T Y

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138 Setting a Purpose for Reading

• Interact with the text as you read, taking notes and underlining examples of loaded language.

• Circle unknown words and phrases. Try to determine the meaning of the words by using context clues, word parts, or a dictionary.

About the Author

Andrew Rooney (1911–2011) was a popular commentator on the TV news program 60 Minutes for more than 30 years. In that time, he wrote more than 800 essays, which he presented either on television or in the newspaper. He earned many awards for his writing, which was often humorous and sometimes controversial.

Essay

America the

Not-So-Beautiful

by Andrew A. Rooney

1 Next to saving stuff I don’t need, the thing I like to do best is throw it away. My idea of a good time is to load up the back of the car with junk on a Saturday morning and take it to the dump. There’s something satisfying about discarding almost anything.

2 Throwing things out is the American way. We don’t know how to fix anything, and anyone who does know how is too busy to come, so we throw it

My Notes

Learning Targets

• Recognize the characteristics and structures of argumentative text and analyze a claim.

• Identify the thesis, or controlling idea, of a text.

• Identify the intended audience of an argumentative text.

Preview

In this activity, you will read and analyze a humorous argumentative text about pollution and waste. Then you will begin crafting your own argumentative text on the issue your class has chosen.

Learning Strategies Previewing

SOAPStone Think Aloud Graphic Organizer

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139

away and buy a new one. Our economy depends on us doing that. The trouble

with throwing things away is, there is no “away” left.

3 Sometime around the year 500 B.C., the Greeks in Athens passed a law prohibiting people from throwing their garbage in the street. This Greek law was the first recognition by civilized people that throwing things away was a problem. Now, as the population explodes and people take up more room on Earth, there’s less room for everything else.

4 The more civilized a country is, the worse the trash problem is. Poor countries don’t have the same problem because they don’t have much to discard. Prosperity in the United States is based on using things up as fast as we can, throwing away what’s left, and buying new ones.

5 We’ve been doing that for so many years that (1) we’ve run out of places to throw things because houses have been built where the dump was and (2) some of the things we’re throwing away are poisoning the Earth and will eventually poison all of us and all living things.

6 Ten years ago most people thought nothing of dumping an old bottle of weed or insect killer in a pile of dirt in the back yard or down the drain in the street, just to get rid of it. The big companies in America had the same feeling, on a bigger scale. For years the chemical companies dumped their poisonous wastes in the rivers behind the mills, or they put it in fifty-gallon drums in the vacant lots, with all the old, rusting machinery in it, up behind the plants.

The drums rusted out in ten years and dumped their poison into the ground.

It rained, the poisons seeped into the underground streams and poisoned everything for miles around. Some of the manufacturers who did this weren’t even evil. They were dumb and irresponsible. Others were evil because they knew how dangerous it was but didn’t want to spend the money to do it right.

My Notes

Roots and Affixes

Prosperity comes from the Latin word meaning “to cause to succeed” or “fortunate.” The root sper-, meaning “hope,” is also found in desperate. The suffix -ity forms a noun.

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-Interact with the text as you read by taking notes in the margin and underlining examples of loaded language.

-Circle unknown words and phrases

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7 The problem is staggering. I often think of it when I go in the hardware store or a Sears Roebuck and see shelves full of poison. You know that, one way or another, it’s all going to end up in the Earth or in our rivers and lakes.

8 I have two pint bottles of insecticide with 3 percent DDT in them in my own garage that I don’t know what to do with. I bought them years ago when I didn’t realize how bad they were. Now I’m stuck with them.

9 The people of the city of New York throw away nine times their weight in garbage and junk every year. Assuming other cities come close to that, how long will it be before we trash the whole Earth?

10 Of all household waste, 30 percent of the weight and 50 percent of the volume is the packaging that stuff comes in.

11 Not only that, but Americans spend more for the packaging of food than all our farmers together make in income growing it. That’s some statistic.

12 Trash collectors are a lot more independent than they used to be because we’ve got more trash than they’ve got places to put it. They have their own schedules and their own holidays. Some cities try to get in good with their trash collectors or garbage men by calling them “sanitation engineers.”

Anything just so long as they pick it up and take it away.

13 We often call the dump “the landfill” now, too. I never understood why land has to be filled, but that’s what it’s called. If you’re a little valley just outside town, you have to be careful or first thing you know you’ll be getting “filled.”

14 If 5 billion people had been living on Earth for the past thousand years as they have been in the past year, the planet would be nothing but one giant landfill, and we’d have turned America the beautiful into one huge landfill.

Parallel Structure

Notice that when Rooney uses a series in the final paragraph, he puts all of the elements in the same grammatical form:

... for all of us to pack up, board a spaceship, and

move out.

The words pack, board, and move are all verbs that are parallel in structure. Remember to check your writing and make sure that nouns, verbs, and phrases are parallel.

GRAMMAR USAGE

&

staggering: stunning, shocking

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-Interact with the text as you read by taking notes in the margin and underlining examples of loaded language.

-Circle unknown words and phrases

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15 The best solution may be for all of us to pack up, board a spaceship, and move out. If Mars is habitable, everyone on Earth can abandon this planet we’ve trashed, move to Mars, and start trashing that. It’ll buy us some time.

Making Observations

• What captures your attention the most in this essay?

• What emotions did you feel while reading this essay?

Returning to the Text

• Return to the text as you respond to the following questions. Use text evidence to support your responses.

• Write any additional questions you have about the essay in your Reader/Writer Notebook.

1. How does the author use loaded language to convey his point of view about throwing things away? Cite examples from the text.

2. How does the author connect the idea of prosperity to the amount of trash people throw away?

3. In paragraph 4, the author says, “The more civilized a country is, the worse the trash problem.”

What does he mean by “civilized” in this sentence?

4. What are two central ideas of the text? What details support these ideas throughout the essay?

5. How does Rooney’s use of humor in the last paragraph affect the tone of the essay? What is the effect?

habitable: a place where people could survive

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142 Working from the Text

The letters in SOAPSTone stand for subject, occasion, audience, purpose, speaker, and tone.

This acronym gives you a helpful tool for analyzing text by breaking it down into separate parts.

Introducing the Strategy: SOAPSTone

6. Use the SOAPSTone strategy to analyze Andrew A. Rooney’s argumentative essay. Think about how the idea that “throwing things out is the American way” influences individuals to act as if Earth were a huge trash dump.

SOAPSTone Analysis Textual Support

Subject:

What is the topic?

Occasion:

What are the circumstances surrounding this text?

Audience:

Who is the target audience?

Purpose:

Why did the author write this text?

Speaker:

What does the reader know about the writer?

Tone:

What is the writer’s attitude toward the subject?

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7. While a thesis in an informational text most often explains the writer’s main idea, a thesis or claim in an argumentative text is the writer’s position or point of view on an issue. Read the example of a claim that follows. Mark the claim by underlining its subject (usually nouns), circling its opinion (words with strong connotations), and highlighting the reasons to be developed.

Claim: There are numerous downsides to year-round schooling; it has no positive effects on education, it adds to the cost, and it disturbs the long- awaited summer vacation.

8. Write a clear and concise claim for Andrew Rooney’s essay. Use information from your SOAPSTone analysis. Reread the text as needed to write the claim.

Writing Process: Writing a Claim for an Argumentative Essay

9. Quickwrite: Write your ideas about both sides of the issue your class chose to write about. Share your position with your writing group. As a group, come to a consensus about your position and make a claim. Present your writing group’s position and claim to the class.

10. As a class, select a position and claim.

Class position/claim about the issue:

ACADEMIC

A claim in this usage is a statement that can be argued, such as whether a fact is true or not, a situation is good or bad, or one action is better than another. In an argumentative text, the claim is supported by reasons and evidence.

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Cognates

The English word consensus means “general agreement.”

It has the same meaning as the Spanish word consenso.

Both words come from the Latin word consentı¯re, which means agree.

INDEPENDENT READING LINK

Reading Plan

In class, you just read an argumentative text about trash and pollution. What is another issue that interests you or affects your daily life?

For outside reading, read an article or book about another controversial issue. You may want to refer back to the list in Activity 2.11 for ideas. Compare and contrast that text to the one in this activity. Use your Reader/Writer Notebook to record your ideas.

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11. Use a SOAPSTone graphic organizer to generate your initial ideas about the class position/claim.

12. Draft your claim.

Check Your Understanding

Review the draft of your claim. Does it clearly state the issue and your position? If not, revise your draft to achieve a clear and concise claim.

My Notes

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145 LC 2.12 Language Checkpoint:

Writing Parallel Lists

Strong writers use various techniques to make their writing clear and engaging. One such technique is using parallel structure when writing lists. When a list is parallel, all the items in the list share a similar structure.

1. Look at the example that follows from the article “America the Not-So-Beautiful” by Andrew A. Rooney. Notice the words in bold. How many items does Rooney list? What is similar about them?

The best solution may be for all of us to pack up, board a spaceship, and move out.

2. Look at this sample student sentence from an essay about “America the Not-So-Beautiful.”

What do you notice about the items in the list? Discuss with a partner how you might change the sentence to make it clearer.

Rooney is worried that poisonous wastes are seeping into rivers, make people sick, and damaging the environment.

Parallel Lists with Words and Phrases

Sometimes lists contain a series of words or phrases. In these cases, the words or phrases should have a similar form. In other words, they should be parallel. Look at the following examples.

Not Parallel: My mom likes to recycle, reusing, and refurbishes old things.

Parallel: My mom likes recycling, reusing, and refurbishing things around our house.

Notice how the form of the word was the same in the correct sentence. The consistent use of the -ing ending clarifies the meaning and draws attention to the action.

Not Parallel: The recycling truck comes down the street, around the block, and then he would come by our house.

Parallel: The recycling truck comes down the street, around the block, and by our house.

Notice that the phrases here all tell where the truck is going—down, around, and by. Then the extra information follows the same pattern: the street, the block, our house. This will keep the pattern clear and allow the reader to easily picture what is taking place.

• Understand how to create parallel lists of words, phrases, and clauses.

• Correctly use commas and semicolons to separate parallel items in a series.

In this activity, you will practice writing parallel lists and punctuating them correctly.

Learning Targets

Preview

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146 LC 2.12

3. Complete the sentences with parallel words and/or phrases. Write the correct answer on the line.

a. Collecting recyclable trash and ____________ the water bottles are included in Simon’s jobs as waste management leader. [also to refill / refilling / refill]

b. Sweat poured off her face, ran down her neck, and _____________________ as Cheyenne focused intently on picking up trash in her neighborhood. [soaked her shirt / was soaking her shirt / did soak her shirt]

c. “My idea of a good time is to ___________ up the back of the car with junk on a Saturday morning and ______________ it to the dump” (Rooney). [loading; taking / load; take / then load; to take]

4. Choose one of your answers and explain to a partner how you knew which answer was correct.

Parallel Lists with Clauses

A clause is a word group that contains both a subject and a verb. Clauses can stand alone when they express a complete thought (independent clause), or they can need another clause to help them make sense (dependent clause). Sometimes a sentence can contain a series of clauses. In these cases, the clauses should be written in parallel form.

Not Parallel: The sanitation workers were told that long sleeves would protect their skin, goggles would protect their eyes, and to use dust masks to protect their throat and lungs.

Parallel: The sanitation workers were told that long sleeves would protect their skin, goggles would protect their eyes, and dust masks would protect their throat and lungs.

Because clauses are typically longer, it is important to use parallel structure when writing or your reader may become confused.

5. Read the following sentences from the article “America the Not-So-Beautiful” and mark the words, phrases, or clauses that use parallel structure:

• Ten years ago, most people thought nothing of dumping an old bottle of weed or insect killer in a pile of dirt, in the back yard, or down the drain in the street, just to get rid of it.

• They have their own schedules and their own holidays.

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147 LC 2.12

6. Read the sentences and decide whether or not they contain parallel structure. If the sentence is correct, then write “correct” in the correction column. If it is incorrect, then mark the part or parts that are not parallel and rewrite the sentence to demonstrate how it could be fixed.

Sentence Correction (if needed)

In 1031, the Japanese began to recycle and then repulped their paper.

When the Black Death struck Europe in 1348, the illness spread because of the garbage people threw in the streets and the lack of sanitary living.

One of the early purposes of the Salvation Army was to collect, sorting, and recycling used or unwanted items.

Today, neighborhoods are filled with dark green cans for trash and bright blue cans in order for people to be able to recycle.

7. Choose a sentence and explain your revision to your partner.

Punctuating Parallel Lists

Now that you understand how to correctly create parallel lists of words, phrases, and clauses, the next step is to make sure you correctly punctuate these structures.

Punctuation Rules:

• Use a comma to separate items in a series. For logic and consistency, it is helpful to include a final comma (called a serial, or Oxford, comma) before the conjunction; however, it is usually not incorrect to omit it.

• Use a semicolon to join items in a series when the items themselves include commas.

8. Underline the parallel verb phrases in the following sentence and circle the commas that separate them.

Andrew A. Rooney also says, “Prosperity in the United States is based on using things up as fast as we can, throwing away what’s left, and buying new ones” (“America the Not-So- Beautiful”).

9. Underline the parallel items in the following sentence and circle the semicolons that divide them.

My parents had their first meeting on April 3, 1992; their first conversation on April 27, 1992;

and their first date on April 30, 1992.

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Revising

Read the sample student response and make corrections to create parallel structure. Add the necessary punctuation to the paragraph.

[1] Sometimes it’s hard to think about the results of recycling or not to recycle because we only see the immediate effects of our choices. [2] However, this should be a reason to care about recycling.

[3] We are preparing the world where our grandkids will live and hope that it will be better. [4] My mom won’t let me keep food in my room because she knows that it will cause a bug infestation. [5]

It’s the same with recycling. [6] Since we know what will happen if we don’t start taking care of our trash, we should do all we can to stop our own “infestation.”

Check Your Understanding

In Activity 2.12, you were asked to write a “clear and concise claim for Andrew Rooney’s essay”

using information from the SOAPSTone analysis. The following is a sample response. Correct any mistakes in parallel structure and/or its punctuation and then write an explanation for how you knew that something was wrong and what you did to fix it.

In his article “America the Not-So-Beautiful,” Andrew Rooney addresses the trash problems of our country in order to get people’s attention and then he wants to present the problem and after that to inspire change.

Now add an item to your Editor’s Checklist to help you remember to check for parallel structure in your writing.

Practice

Using the information you collected in your SOAPSTone from Activity 2.12, write a short paragraph (4–5 sentences) about what you believe would be the best way to address the problem of too much waste. Be sure to:

• Use at least one example of parallel structure.

• Keep your verb tenses consistent.

• Punctuate any listing.

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