Abstract

The contest “Touched by Advertising”, organized by the Publicity Department of Nebrija University, gives awards in three general categories: Great Touched, Young Touched and Touched to Career Development. Alongside these general categories, there are technical awards for the best slogan, the best performance, the best score and the best creative idea.

As a result of the collaboration between the Publicity Department and the Applied Languages Department, in the year 2010 the contest had a special award given by the Department of Applied Languages to the best story, which involved several steps. Firstly, viewing and selecting the best ad campaigns of the year, with the participation of all university students. The second phase involved only students of second year of Applied Languages, who analyzed the top 10 selected campaigns. The third and final phase entailed the evaluation and selection of the best story.

The methodology included the collection of the ads and the text transcript, the analysis of the texts, a discussion group and the final vote. The criteria used to evaluate and analyse the ads were based on different aspects related to the content, the narrative structure and the style of the text.

This educational experience in LSP was prepared with the aim of involving students in a meaningful and semi-professional context, very motivating. Another complementary but not least important objective, was to make them see the usefulness of text analysis in their structural, typological and stylistic dimensions, as a final task in the subject Intercultural Communication for Professional Purposes.

In our paper the methodology and the criteria used are explained in depth together with the results obtained and problems faced along this new educational experience.