GOING BEYOND PATTERNS: THE EFFECTS OF HUMOR COMPETENCE ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

Studies on classroom procedure related to humor competence have been remarkably sparse. An early attempt had been made by Claire (1998) and Morain (1997). The uniqueness of the present study lies in shifting focus from the effects of four language skills on language proficiency to the effect of a new factor i.e. humor competence. Vega (1989) views humor competence as part of overall communicative competence. This study investigates the effect of humor competence on general language proficiency. To do so, 60 high intermediate Iranian students were randomly selected, and randomly assigned to two groups, the first group received traditional instruction on 4 language skills, the second received instruction related to humor competence based on humor taxonomy (Morain 1991, Attrado 1992, Di maio 2002) in which students received instructions regarding three areas: points of English jokes, sociocultural knowledge in understanding jokes, and masking device in jokes.Before instruction begins, the FCE (FIRST CERTIFICATE IN ENGLISH) test was taken and the results for each group were recorded. The length of instruction for both groups was 20 sessions, 2 sessions in a week. At the end of instruction the FCE test was taken again. Comparing the results of contrast group and experimental group in pretest and post test indicates that the experimental group outperforms the contrast group. Although many teachers believe that dealing with language in divergent ways ,i.e. playful figurative language which often underlies humor, is wasting time, this study shows that not only it is not wasting time, but also is it more effective than traditional instruction on four language skills.