HUMOR COMPREHENSION AND ENJOYMENT IN THE CLASSROOM: THE CASE OF CONVERSATIONAL JOKES IN SITCOMS

Introduction: this paper describes an assessment of L2 language humour comprehension under experimental conditions in a classroom context. Participants 25 Spanish students were exposed to a series of jokes in English, the target language of study, during their regular language classes at a private language school. Procedure: a total of 10 minutes was dedicated to the audio-visual presentation of jokes in 5 different 1-hour teaching sessions. Results: most students reported having understood the jokes presented to a good (4 in the Likert scale) or a very good extent (5 in the Likert scale). Comprehension problems were often derived from a lack of vocabulary or the lack of cultural references. Suggestions for adaptation of humour in the classroom are provided in order to overcome these comprehension problems.