A Missing Link in ELT: EFL Learners’ Recognition, Comprehension and Appreciation of English Humor

Yıl 2017, Cilt: 7 Sayı: 2, 51 - 69, 01.07.2017

Mohammad Ahmadi Safa Azam Ghonchehpour

Öz

 Familiarity with different aspects of English humor applied by native speakers in
their daily interactions could help EFL learners to understand humorous expressions
that might be otherwise literally vague or pointless to them. Therefore, the current
study attempts to find out whether humor instruction could result in the Iranian EFL
learners' ability to recognize, comprehend, and appreciate English humor. To this
aim, 82 female intermediate and upper-intermediate EFL learners were selected and
taught some linguistic and socio-cultural aspects of English humor. Three researcher-
made questionnaires examined the effect of lexical and grammatical knowledge of
the learners on their recognition, comprehension, and appreciation of English humor
as well as the effect of humor instruction on the three variables. The results of two
MANOVA analyses revealed that, unlike lexico-grammatical knowledge,
familiarizing learners with structural and socio-cultural aspects of English humor
could significantly influence the EFL learners' recognition, comprehension, and
appreciation of English humor. This piece of finding might underscore the superior
role of cultural factors over linguistic knowledge when dealing with EFL learners'
humor comprehension and production; moreover, the instruction of sociocultural
aspects of foreign language humor seems to be of higher importance compared with
lexico-grammatical and linguistic aspects.

Anahtar Kelimeler

English humor, Recognition, Comprehension, Appreciation, EFL Learners

Kaynakça

• Balçıkanlı, C. (2010). Learner autonomy in language learning: Student teachers’ beliefs. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 35(1): 90-103.