Reading and Writing to Learn the Language: The Testimony of the 19th Century Press

Through the collation of a corpus of advertisements of modern language courses appearing in the Spanish press of the 19th century, the aim of this article is to present some reflections on the usefulness of this noncanonical source for the study of the ideas about the process of teaching and learning foreign languages. More specifically, we will focus on the learning of reading and writing in foreign languages contexts. To this end, the figure of a language teacher shown in press is analyzed as a case study and the focus is placed on how advertisements use certain advertising claims to attract clients to their classrooms. From a theoretical point of view, it is proposed, in line with Garrido V & iacute;lchez (2023), the existence of a protopublicitario pathway for the analysis triangulated with the media and manualistic pathways. In addition, at least three lines of continuity of this theoretical approach are proposed for future research work.