humor writing: getting students started in creating their own laughs using humor and its endless benefits students rsquo use of humor in the classroom has always been one of the most fascinating aspects of my teaching experiences. Between classes, standing in the halls, i often zoom out and observe the kids rsquo comic exchanges, and i am always amazed by the complicated ways they make each other laugh and their intricate play with language: spoken language, written language, and body language. Throughout the school day, students construct these systems of humor to move each other to the point of laughter, regardless of the teacher rsquo s involvement. It only makes sense that we provide a methodical use of humor in the classroom, a safe space where students can explore their own use of comedy and its effect on others.

Argument Essay Prompt Ap Lang

Using humor in the classroom does not mean the teacher should necessarily take the role of stand up comic, standing in front of the class and finding ways to make the students laugh. It does mean we as teachers can guide the students through the study of humor, and eventually to the creation of successful humor pieces. These explorations can all take place within a humor writing workshop, a workshop in which students start by defining humor and identifying the nuances of what we find funny. Not only do students establish a language of humor they can use when discussing each other rsquo s comedy writing, but as their teacher, i find these terms and definitions most beneficial when setting up and sustaining our classroom community of mutual respect. While exploring humor through writing, we find ourselves addicted to having a good laugh, not just during a creative writing lesson, but at any point in our day. humor writing in an esl classroom and setting goals this being my first year in an esl classroom, i find myself using humor writing to gently push the students into their own experimentations with english, a foreign language to them. I encourage my students to play with these new sounds, these new words, these new syntaxes, and they do.

Their play with language happens two ways, both beneficial to their english learning. My students are all turkish speakers, so when prompted to create something humorous, their first instinct is always to translate a joke literally from turkish to english. For example, 6th grader alinur shared his joke with the class at the beginning of the year: alinur: what number is this? asked, grinning, while holding five fingers to the left of his face and five fingers to the right the class: what? alinur: five hundred and five! the class: mostly silent with some confused laughter alinur rsquo s joke was a play on the turkish word y z. Which has two meanings, one being ldquo face rdquo and the other ldquo one hundred. Rdquo so, holding five fingers on either side of his face, alinur was thinking we would guess ldquo five hundred and five. Rdquo as always, my students rsquo disappointment with their classmates rsquo response to literally translated jokes guides them to the realization of humor rsquo s intricacies and its often untranslatable quality. I often remind my students that to be humorous in a foreign language is a great sign of fluency in that language.

Best Music to Listen to While Writing Papers

The other way my esl students enjoy playing with the english language is in purposely writing incorrect english. For example, we had a lesson on regular and irregular past tense verbs, and my students used this grammar lesson in their humor pieces, writing in a voice that makes mistakes in english. They had just learned the correct past tense of ldquo to put rdquo is ldquo put, rdquo so it was thrilling for them to write in a voice that says, ldquo i putted the ball away.

Essay on The Happiest Day of My Life

Rdquo i acknowledge and inform the students that this type of comedy is only successful inside our english learning classroom, but i recognize that by finding humor in english mistakes, my students are reinforcing the grammar lessons they learn. Rsquo s ldquo a trip to the zoo rdquo to see a great play on words rsquo meanings and words rsquo sounds. humor writing in a non esl classroom yet with similar goals my approach to teaching humor writing has not changed much since i shifted from a non esl classroom to an esl classroom this year, simply because i find importance in helping students towards a literacy of english, even if english happens to be their native language.

Essay on Importance of Nature In Hindi

Just as alinur discovered his joke unsuccessful because the humor failed to translate from turkish to english, so do many jokes fail to translate within the same language. Often times, jokes have cultural significance, or are too situational to be understood and appreciated by all audiences. Exploring this aspect of comedy helps the students understand humor rsquo s sometime offensiveness, and eventually our classroom goal is to have a sense of tactfulness, or the ability to read an audience. Know it all rdquo definitely translates to his audience, since many can relate to the shared experience of having classmates just like the one mathew creates. defining humor the definite first step in exploring comedy through a humor writing workshop is to spend plenty of time working out definitions of humor with the students.