Examining the effect of advertising film-supported activities in Turkish courses on the critical thinking skills of seventh grade students.

Although advertising films have increasingly been used as authentic multimedia resources in language education, empirical evidence on their effectiveness in fostering students' critical thinking skills remains limited. Moreover, the mechanisms through which advertising films support higher-order thinking remain underexplored from constructivist, multimodal learning, and cognitive engagement perspectives. This study examined the effect of advertising film-based activities on the critical thinking skills of seventh-grade students in Turkish language classes using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. Quantitative data were collected through a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control-group design, followed by classroom observations and semi-structured interviews to explain the findings. The study involved 44 seventh-grade students over a twelve-week intervention. The experimental group participated in advertising film-based learning activities, whereas the control group followed the standard curriculum. Quantitative results showed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in critical thinking skills (p < 0.05), indicating a strong intervention effect, while no significant difference was found between post-test and retention-test scores, suggesting sustained learning gains over time. Qualitative findings indicated increased student engagement, active participation, and deeper cognitive engagement, which supported and contextualized the quantitative findings. These findings suggest that advertising films enhance critical thinking through cognitive engagement, multimodal meaning-making, and active knowledge construction grounded in constructivist learning theory. Beyond Turkish language education, the study contributes to international research on multimedia-supported learning by demonstrating how authentic audiovisual materials can foster higher-order thinking skills in diverse educational contexts.