Joke and Its Relation to Students Grammar Mastery in EFL Learning

Abstract

This linguistic-based educational research was conducted to identify the relation between semantic understanding and student's syntax comprehension in learning English as foreign language. This observational research was managed by giving English humor (joke, pun, wit, etc.) to thirty students of English Department. In addition, students were interviewed to know how humor is advantageous for their grammar understanding. This research emerged that students were encouraged to construct well-structured sentences after firstly discovering the meaning of the humor. The first factor was the fact that students were able to understand the whole humor although they missed the grammar structure of it. The second factor was the in complex and brief structure of humor-triggered students to competently sustain its grammatical structure. The third factor was the ridiculousness of the joke itself. That humor is undoubtedly ridiculous motivate students to memorize its grammatical structure and meaning. Thus, humor was highly beneficial for students to elevate their grammatical mastery.

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