Teaching Korean Culture with Advertisements: Change and Persistence in Family Values and Gender Roles

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study explores how advertisements reflect the cultural values that underpin family or gender roles, and deals with change and persistence in such values and roles as well as with how such changes can be discussed in a foreign language class. Advertising messages tend to be brief and stereotypical and relate easily to the most common values in the society because audiences are meant to recognize the message immediately. The use of advertisements in classroom instruction can therefore facilitate the understanding of a culture, especially for advanced language learners. A themebased instruction course (from among three CBI models) is introduced and covers gender roles and family issues in Korea using TV commercials or print ads.