Advertising

A selection of business English discussion questions.

See more business English discussion topics

  1. Can you think of a television advert which was very successful? Why did it work?
  2. How does your company advertise? Is their strategy successful?
  3. Does your company use a slogan as part of its advertising? Should they use one?
  4. Can you think of any unusual marketing strategies that might work for your company?
  5. If you had to choose a celebrity to endorse your company, who would you choose?
  6. Do you think your own consumer choices are affected by advertising?
  7. Do you think online advertising works or are all the adverts just annoying?
  8. Is television advertising as powerful as it used to be? What about in the future?
  9. Do you think there should be any limits on advertising to children?
  10. What do you think about the use of sex as an advertising strategy?
  11. Do you think alcohol and tobacco should be advertised? Why or why not?
  12. What methods of advertising do you think companies will use in 50 years’ time?
PDF (Individual)
General
PDF (Pairs)
General
PDF (Threes)
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PDF (Cards)
General
How to use the advertising ESL discussion questions

It is recommended that you download the advertising ESL discussion questions in PDF format using one of the links above. The best way to encourage classroom interaction is to download and print the advertising discussion questions in the 'pairs' or 'threes' PDF format and then divide the questions by cutting along the dotted lines. This allows students to take turns asking and answering the advertising discussion questions in groups of two or three. Alternatively, you could use the 'cards' format to distribute the questions to any number of students to ask and share.

It is advisable to prepare students for using these discussion questions by first introducing them to the topic of advertising in an interesting and engaging way. An anecdote, quiz question or a related image or video could all be used to achieve this. Depending on the level, it may also be necessary to pre-teach any challenging vocabulary related to advertising contained in the discussion questions.

For more ESL discussion questions, see this site's main page. There are discussion questions on a range of topics including general, grammar and business English topics.

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