Injecting Humor in Teaching Literature

Abstract

Introduction

This study described the respondents' performance in literary comprehension when exposed to teaching with and without humor. Furthermore, it looked into the students' perceptions of humor in learning and its relationship to their performance in literary comprehension.

Methods

The descriptive-correlational research design was used in this study; the descriptive part determined the respondents' performance in literary comprehension when exposed to teaching with and without a sense of humor; the correlation part tested if the respondents' literary comprehension performance was affected by their perceptions of humor in learning. One section of Grade 10 students was selected through random sampling from among the 5 sections. All 36 students from the said section were taken in as respondents. Data gathering instruments were of kinds: questionnaire on the perceived impact of teachers' sense of humor in classroom learning and four researcher-made test questionnaire based on the four lessons in the respondents' literature class.

Results

Data revealed that teachers who injected a sense of humor in teaching did not affect the performance of the students in the class. However, the perception of the respondents in teaching with humor and without humor and the level of performance of the respondents when exposed to teaching with humor and without humor had a moderately significant relationship.

Discussions

Based on the results of the study, it implies that: 1) Students perceive that the students understand the subject matter well when the teacher has a sense of humor. 2) The literary comprehension of the student-respondents exposed to teaching with humor is higher than that of the respondents exposed to teaching without humor. 3) There is no significant difference in the literary comprehension of the respondents exposed to teaching with humor and those exposed to teaching without humor. 4) There is a moderately significant relationship between the respondents' perception and literary comprehension when exposed to teaching with humor and without humor. 5) The respondents' perception of the impact of humor on classroom learning moderately affected their literary comprehension performance.