1
Verbal Humor Used by the English Teachers in the Classroom Interaction (A Study at Junior High School Taman Siswa Padang)
Oleh:
Cecen Suselno *)
**) Mayuasti dan **) Syayid Sandi Sukandi Staff Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Ingris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Cecen Suselno (NIM:10040075), Bahasa Humor yang Diterapkan Guru Bahasa Inggris pada Saat Interaksi di dalam Kelas; Sebuah Study di SMP Taman Siswa Padang. Skripsi.
Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat. Padang, 2014.
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui kategori-kategori humor yang digunakan guru dalam proses belajar mengajar. Dalam penelitian ini peneliti menganalisa kategori humor berdasarkan teori dari Hativa, Robert, dan Richard. Ada empat kategori humor yand dapat digunakan guru didalam kelas yaitu: Joke, Anecdote, Puns,dan Riddle. Peneliti juga ingin mengetahui tujuan guru menggunakan verbal humor di dalam kelas. Selain itu, peneliti juga menanyakan alasan guru menggunakan humor tersebut di dalam kelas.Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif. Sampel yang diambil dari guru bahasa Inggris yang mengajar di SMP Taman Siswa Padang. Sampel ini diambil dengan menggunakan teknik purposes sampling.
Dalam pengambilan data, peneliti melakukan observasi ketika proses belajar mengajar di kelas.
Kemudian, peneliti juga melakukan wawancara pada responden sebagai tambahan informasi.Dari data yang didapatkan pada saat setelah peneliti melakukan observasi diketahui bahwa dan ditemukan guru menerapkan tiga dari empat kategori humor yaitu: joke, puns, dan riddle. Dari data wawancara, guru mengaku telah menerapkan semua kategori humor di atas.
Tujuan guru menggunakan humor tersebut di dalam kelas adalah untuk memotivasi siswa, menarik perhatian siswa, mengurangi kecemasan dalam belajar, menambah pengetahuan, dan menciptakan suasana positif di dalam kelas.
*) Penulis
**) Pembimbing
2 INTRODUCTION
Classroom interaction is the activity that the teacher and the students do communication. The teacher does a duty in delivering material to the students. In doing interaction, the students receive the material that given by the teacher. Both of them do some activities that related to transferring and accepting knowledge. It is caused, there is an interaction process between the teacher and the students in the classroom.
In this globalization era, communicative language teaching needs to make classroom interaction become interesting. The teacher should be able to guide student’s attention during learning process to make the students still focus on material. In guiding the student’s attention, the teacher should have various ideas in building positive atmosphere during classroom activity. The student will be motivated to learn if the class is interesting.
There are many ways to create interesting class or building interesting class in the classroom such as playing game, motivating students, or applying humor in the classroom. Applying humor in the classroom is one positive ways to create interesting class. Hativa (2000:287) states that humor is benefit for student learning
because it promotes: students’ positive attitude toward, motivation for, and satisfaction with learning. It proves that, humor can be useful to create positive atmosphere in learning process.
In creating positive atmosphere by applying humor, the teacher should allow the role of humor itself. The teacher should aware about language use in applying it.
However, the choice of words in applying it should be educated and accepted for student.
Humor which is applied should be relevant withthe material given.
Related to the researcher’s observation, when the teacher used humor in the classroom there were many problems that happened. First, there was no connection of humor with material when the teacher applied it in the classroom. The teacher only wanted to make the student laugh without care about the material that should be given to the student.
Second, the teacher did not aware about the time when applying humor in the classroom. In this case, humor will be useless, because there is no point of material that the student gets from the teacher. The class is full with humor during classroom
3 activity. The function of the teacher is only as a clown not as educator. It can be seen as condition wheareas the teacher can not stop talking about the topic which appears something funny. In this condition, almost all students enjoy the situation and also give feedback to the teacher to create humor in the classroom. In this case, the teacher spends much time to create humor. It makes the material can not deliver to the students.
Third, sometimes humor that applied by teacher appears the negative effect when student becomes target of humor. Actually, if the teacher applies humor to the student that talks about theirdialects. It makes the student less self confidence, less self concept, less motivation, and less respectable from the teacher or classmate. In this condition, the teacher bullies to the student. According to Oxford dictionary, bully is a person who uses his strength or power to frighten or hurt those who are weaker. The teacher has made one students hurt and frighten. In this case, the teacher should be carefull in aplying humor. The language use in aplying humor should be safety to the students. Thus, humor language applied by the teacher is accepted for all student.
In guiding students’ attention, applying humor is positive way. Humor can be benefit to reduce boredom and build positive atmosphere in the classroom, but the teacher should pay attention about their humor. The teacher applied humor should relate with material, aware about duration, and also accepted for all students. The important thing in applying humor is not to frighten or hurt the student. Humor can be useful in the classroom activity, if the teachers use humor in a goodway.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Definition of Interaction
In social life, interaction is important to do by people in their life. There are many activities that can be done by people in doing interaction such as communicate each other, share their ideas, feeling, though, and whatever that they have in their mind.
According to Rivers (1987:4) “interaction is a collaborative activity involving the establishment of triangular relationship between sender, receiver, and context of the situation”. In doing interaction there are three components that should be endled;
sender, receiver, and context of the situation.
Sender is a person who delivers message and information. Meanwhile, receiver is a person who receives the message from the
4 sender. Both of the sender and receiver interact based on context and situation.
Context is the topic which is discussed by sender and receiver. Three components above cannot be separated each other. If one of these components does not fulfill, the interaction will not be run.
There are many benefits of people in doing interaction in their life. They can add their knowledge, rich of experience, ideas, information, and connection. It is caused that they can change and share whatever that they have in mind and whatever that they feel to another. For example, to get information from resources especially person, it is needed to do interaction. People can ask whatever that they want to know by doing interaction. It is because the people need to do interaction in their life..
Definition of Classroom Interaction Interaction is also an important thing in teaching learning process, because the teacher and the students involve in collaborative exchange of ideas, feeling and thought. In interaction, students are able to improve their ability in learning. Meanwhile the teacher is also able to control or manage the classroom during learning process.
Rivers in Brown (1994:159) states that in interaction, students can use all they possess
of the language all they have learned or casually absorbed – in real life exchange.
Referring to the River’s statement above, both of teacher and students maintain interaction in the classroom. While the interaction between teacher and student is running in the classroom, the teacher delivers material of language learning and the student gets it and uses it in their life. It is clear that, both of them do interaction in delivering and accepting material in learning process.
However, interaction has to be done effectively in the classroom. In teaching learning process, interaction is needed to create and built good situation and condition in the classroom. Both of teacher and student should do it optimally and appropriately to get optimal result. Sardiman (2000:2) states interaction in teaching learning process is interaction from teacher to students in doing teaching learning activity should be able to give motivation. It has stated the teacher should make their student motivate in learning to create the activity to be useful.
Definition of Verbal Humor
Verbal Humor is the words that used by the teacher in applying humor orally. The teacher applies humor for many purposes
5 those are getting student’s attention, motivating student, making classroom more interesting, or creating positive atmosphere in the classroom. In presenting humor, there are many factors include in it. Those are culture background, intonation, and audience. Those factors are important thing in creating humor. It is caused humor is universal and every people has different ways in creating humor.
1. Culture
Every country has different sense of humor. It caused the culture is also different each other. Alden, Hoyer, and Lee in Gullas and Marc (2006:48) state that humor is a universal human process exhibited by people of all cultures and throughout all of recorded history.
Referring to the statement above, it supports that culture makes different sense of humor among countries. It can be seen like something funny for one country, but maybe not for others. It caused every country has different background culture each other.
2. Audience
As the listener, the audiences also give similar responses to make the humor works. It is caused by audience that has
different sense of humor. According to Gullas and Marc (2006: 48) state that Audience is the recipent of the humor and, since the humor is designed to entertain it, in a sense, the audience is the true “target” of humor in the parlance of marketing it is the target. The audience is, in fact, the arbiter of what constitutes humor.
Referring to the statement above, audience is the target in designing entertainment. Humor will be run if the speaker can make sense of humor and the listener can understand why they should laugh. In classroom interaction, the teacher as speaker should be able to read the condition of the students in making humor.
Humor from senior high school student and elementary students are also different. It is caused critical thinking both of them are not same.
3. Intonation
In creating humor, intonation is important aspect to make humor that applied is working. Benjamin (2013:122) states that various function of intonation can be mustared by speaker to create humor effect.
For example, pitch range can be exploited to create altered voices in quoted speech. In verbal humor, sound of speech is an important component to create humor.
6 Although, the statement is funny but the intonation is not suitable it means that humor will not run. It can be illustrated such as:
The joke is lost if the intonation changes:
[the lawyers asks:] “ why did you wait so long to make this decision?” “oh”, replies the woman, “ we were waiting for kids to DIE”.
The accent on die creates a reading in which the kids die is not typical or anticipated, but a new idea. Now, further explanation is required. Were the kids terminally ill? Again, the intonation itself adds a component to the humor where lexico-grammatical structure alone would not (Benyamin 2013:128).
In summarize, intonation is one of important component that should be considerate. In creating humor, sound of speech influences the sentences that produce from speaker weather funny or not.
Although the statement is funny but, the intonation cannot provokes the laughter it can be said “it is not humor”. It is caused humor depends on sound of speech from speaker.
Category of verbal Humor 1. Joke
Joke is one of verbal humor categories can be applied by the teacher in the classroom interaction. According to Richard (1996:3) joke is something said or done that provokes laughter. It means that the language that used by the teacher can give an effect to create something funny or provoke laughter in the classroom interaction. Joke is most appropriate verbal humor category in applying humor in building positive atmosphere in the classroom.
2. Anecdote
In applying humor, the teacher can tell funny story in the classroom. The story can be base on teacher’s experience, someone story, or a fact. Robert (2013:85) funny story is a humor tale usually base on fact, which describes a single incident as a series or connecting activities. It means that, the teacher tells the story to guide student in the story because the story possibly happen in the real life.
7 3. Puns
In the classroom interaction, the teacher gives statement to increase student’s attention creating something funny to laugh.
The funny statement called puns. According to Hativa (2000:275) puns is a humorous statement that design to play on the multiple meaning of word. The unusual or unexpected twist is similar but different in meaning (homonym), or of word that has similar meaning (synonym), or by the mispronunciation of word. It means that, in making statement, the teacher changes the word with another which has similar sound intentionally to provoke laughter.
4. Riddle
In doing communication, the teacher sometimes answer student’s question in applying humor which is called riddle.
According to hativa (2000:277) humor riddle is an information-seeking question that does not seem to have a logical answer, and that provide a clever answer in humorous punchline. In creating humor, the teacher gives clever answer when student asks something strange. It is also to build teacher’s image in front of student.
METHODOLOGY
This study was expected to analyze the category of humor language that applied by the teacher in the classroom interaction.
Therefore, the researcher designed this study as descriptive research. Gay and Airisian (2000:11) state that descriptive research involves collecting the data in order to concern the status of the study. It means that, the researcher want to do the research by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the data to answer the research question in chapter one. Meanwhile, the aim of the research was to analyze the category of verbal humor that applied by the teacher in the classroom interaction.
In doing this research, it was important to decide respondents. In choosing respondent, it should be appropriate with subject of the research. In this research, the researcher used purposive sampling to take respondent the researcher has chosen two English teachers as respondent. In choosing respondent the researcher has done interviewed to know the respondents used humor or not in the classroom interaction.
Both of them have applied humor in the classroom. Thus, two of them were available as respondent in this research.
8 In this research, the researcher used instrumen as the tool to collect the data.
Riduan (2010:69) states that “instrumen adalah alat bantu yang dipilih dan digunakan peneliti dalam kegiatannya mengumpulkan agar kegiatan itu menjadi sistematis dan dipermudah olehnya”.
The instrumen as a tool in the research can help the researcher to collect the datasistematically. In thisresearch, the researcher had used four instruments. Those were field notes, observation check list, video recorder, and interview.
The first instrument was observation.
In this research, researcher used written field notes or record the category of verbal humor that applied by teacher in the classroom interaction. Gay and Airisian (2000:213) define that field note is the record of observer about what the researcher has seen, heard, experienced, and though during the observation.
The second instrument was Interview. This instrument was used to get information from respondent directly. Gay and Airisian (2000:219) explain that interview is purposeful interaction, usually between two people, focused on one person trying to get information from the other person. It was clear that interview occurred
between two people that one of them will be source of information. In this research, researcher used structured interview. In interviewing the researcher had recorded the activity during interview.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
After analyzing the data, the researcher has got the result of this research.
Every research questions had been answered by using two instruments. Those were observation and interview. In observation, the researcher also used field note, observation check list, and tape recorder. It is used to answer two research questions about category of verbal humor and dominant category that applied by English teachers. In interview, It used to answer all research question about category of verbal humor, dominant category, and the reason of the teacher applied dominant category in applying humor.
The result of first research question about “what are verbal humor is applied by English teachers in the classroom interaction?”. In answering this research question the researcher used observation and interview as instrument. By doing observation, the researcher found that there were three categories from teacher A and three categories from teacher B. Those
9 categories were joke, puns, and riddle. The researcher did not found anecdote from both of the teacher during observation.
The result of second research question about “what are the purpose of the English teachers use verbal humor in the classroom?”. In answering this research question the researcher did interview. The researcher found that the purposes of the teacher used verbal humor were to increase student’s motivation, get student’s attention, and create positive atmosphere in the classroom interaction.
The last research question about
“why the teacher use kind of verbal humor”?. In answering this research question, the researcher only used interview as instrument. The researcher had got information from two English teachers. The reasons of the teacher used kind of verbal humor because the students were not focus in learning, the students were noisy in the classroom, and the student asked silly questions to the teacher.
DISCUSSION
There are three theories from the expert about category of verbal humor can be applied by the teacher in the classroom interaction. Those are joke, puns, and riddle.
In doing this research, the research has seen
three categories that applied during observation. Those are joke, puns, and riddle.
The purposes of the teacher used verbal humor are dealing with the theory.
The purposes are to increase student’s motivation, reduce anxiety, get student’s attention, add knowledge, and create positive atmosphere. The researcher found three purpose of the teacher used humor were to increase student motivation, get student’s attention, and create positive atmosphere.
CONCLUSION
Humor is useful in teaching learning process. By using humor the teacher can motivate student, get student attention, reduce anxiety, add knowledge, and create positive atmosphere. In applying humor, there are many categories can be applied in the classroom interaction. Those are joke, anecdote, puns, and riddle.
In this research, the researcher wanted to prove all categories of verbal humor that applied by English teacher in the classroom interaction. This research conducted the descriptive research at Junior High School Tamsis Padang. There two English teachers as participants. It caused
10 there are only two the teacher teach English in this school.
Related with research finding, the researcher conclude into; the result observation and interview. In observation, the researcher found three categories of verbal humor. Those are joke, puns, and riddle. The purposes of the teacher used verbal humor are to increase student’s motivation, get student’s attention and create positive atmosphere. And the reasons of the teacher used humor because students are not serious in learning, students create noisy sound, and the student’s asked silly question to the teacher.
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