SHIFT TO THE FUTURE: THE PROSPECTS OF ENHANCING ENGLISH PROFICIENCY AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH HUMOROUS TEXTS
Oleh : Dyah Rochmawati, S1 – Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris
Texts as the most pervsdasive use of teaching material play strategic roles in a foreign language teaching and learning. They provide samples of real language use in appropriate social contexts so that they provide input model for learners learning English as a foreign language such ones in Indonesia. Texts can also generate classroom interaction between the teacher-students and the students-students, thus minimizing the teacher dominance and maximizing the students’ involvement. It therefore promotes collaborative as well as autonomous learning environment. Humor is the most interesting and puzzling aspects of human behavior. It has been rightfully argued that it plays an important role in an individual’s development, as well as in interpersonal communication (Mihalcea, 2007). A humorous text, as one of the text-types, is to communicate a certain attitude of humor performed by the text. It has the ability to make one feel amused or amusement. It can evoke and make him laugh. It thus brings about happiness to the readers. The humorous texts help the learners read an authentic text and have fun in their English class as well. The aim of this paper is to explore a possibility of using humorous texts is to help Indonesian learners of English improve the language proficiency. It approaches the humorous texts from various viewpoints: their social functions, generic structure, and lexicogrammatical features.