ASSESSING HUMOUR APPRECIATION AMONG TERTIARY STUDENTS

Abstract

As simple as it may seem, humour is in fact a pivotal part of general human interaction. The subject of humour and its influences has long been explored in many fields and later extended into the field of teaching. These studies reported positive influence of humour in teaching and advocated its insertion in the classrooms. Therefore, the objective of this study is to assess humour appreciation of 10 narrative jokes among tertiary students in order to provide more teaching materials that can be used by educators. A purposive sampling of an intact group, which consisted of 27 students, was included in this study. The findings revealed three narrative jokes that were rated humorous by the participants themselves. Moreover, statistically significant differences were also detected in humour rating between male and female participants. Thus, these are hoped to add to the existing body of knowledge on humour application in language teaching.