Story Jokes

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Story Jokes for real communication

Story Jokes

Teachers want their students to genuinely communicate with each other in socially acceptable ways, and at the same time become more aware of cultural traits. What is needed in a classroom is a reaction that is real because it is spontaneous. The value of relating a funny story lies in the commitment required of the student telling it and in the observable and sincere response that he/she elicits from the student who listens to it. At higher levels, the above activity can be followed up with story jokes.

1. Get a set of 6–12 funny stories, roughly one or two paragraphs in length. These can be found in various magazines (e.g. The Reader’s Digest, English Teaching Forum, etc.) and textbooks; and even your friends might burden you with them upon request. It’s best to avoid ethnic, sexual, and political genres, of course. The important thing is that the stories have clear and separable
punch lines.

2. Write the stories out on slips of paper, without their respective punch lines. Don’t worry if you have six jokes and twelve students. Just repeat the jokes.

3. Write all the respective punch lines out on a sheet of paper.

4. Distribute one unfinished story joke to each student. If two students have the same joke, so much the better. This simulates a real life situation when people have heard the same joke.

5. Distribute the sheets of punch lines to each student.
They have to find the punch line to their own story and then “learn” the joke—whether that means memorizing it or putting it into their own words. They should be careful, however, to retain at least the elements that give the joke its flavor, and perhaps even determine its effect.

6. Tell the students to go around the classroom as if they were in a pub, bar, or other social situation. They should approach another student, break the ice with “Have you heard the one about…?” and tell their joke. The other student should just react or say (if he/she doesn’t understand) “I don’t get it.” Hopefully, the joke teller can either repeat the salient parts, the punch line or, if worst comes to worst, explain why the joke is funny.The other student should then try and tell his/her story.

N.B.

The students should tell their joke several times to different people in one class. Tell them not to hesitate to change the joke story the second time if they feel that will aid in making the joke more understandable or even funnier. In the telling of a funny story, the commitment resides not with the truth of information being expressed, or even one’s adherence to a view point about an issue—the usual kinds of activities in classrooms. Usually these two varieties of commitment lead to obviousness on the one hand or unfair culpability on the other. Telling funny stories makes a student accountable for the success of the speech act itself, i.e. the proof is in the pudding.

A Funny Story

A woman was walking down the street one day when she happened to see a man holding a monkey. The woman asked the man, “Where did you find that monkey?” The man answered, “In the street. Why?” The woman said, “You should take him to the zoo. “ The man said, “That’s a good idea.” The next day the woman saw the man with the monkey again. She said, “I thought you were going to take him to the zoo.” The man answered, “Oh, I did, and he really enjoyed it. So today I’m going to take him to the movies.”

How to teach a Joke in classroom

Step One

As a warm-up activity, the teacher might ask the students to tell an interesting joke that they might have recently heard or retell one that they had worked on in the previous session.

Step Two

Before beginning to read the jokes, the teacher provides the students with the definitions of some words that students may have difficulty understanding and draw their attention to the meaning of the words and useful phrases, grammatical

or phonological points as well. It could happen both before and after the joke.

Step Three

The teacher either reads or has one of the students read the joke out loud (and clearly). Owing to the fact that students’ locus of attention is on the meaning and they are anxious to catch the punch line, this could be a meaningful activity. It should be noticed that while reading the joke, pronunciation, stress pattern, and intonation should be taken into accoun

Step Four

Having completed articulating the joke, and having become certain that every- body has got the meaning, the teacher asks the students why the joke was or was not funny and tries to elicit students’ opinion on the joke. She may also ask several display question

Step Five

At this point, the teacher may give the learners (in pairs or small groups) an opportunity to each tell the joke (with script in hand or on the board/screen). Then the teacher may call on a volunteer to retell the joke in a paraphrased form. Other students may help him/her in trying to retell the story; they have the choice to adopt the newly-learnt words in their renditions as well.

Step Six

Having gone through the above mentioned steps, students may role play the joke in pairs. They should pay particular attention to the intonation and rhythm of the language; when to raise or lower their voice to convey the meaning of the joke as effectively as possible.

Step Seven

In the last phase, the students are given a cloze-test and practice the newly- learnt word, idioms and expressions. For instance, different collocations taught at the outset of the lesson can be worked on by giving one part (e.g. adverb) and hav- ing students match it with other parts (e.g. verbs), or giving the whole phrase and having students fill in the blanks.

Complete this dialogue with words or expressions from the list below

Take told a dirty joke told cracking

joking embarrassing hilarious

not easy no joke

A: You must be ———! Tell me about it, what happened?

B: You know, he just ——- a dirty joke about my family and that really made me angry.

A: Is that it? Seriously dude, can’t you ——- a joke? You were annoyed just be- cause of that?

B: Somebody has got to tell him that ——— a joke like that about anyone’s family is very rude.

Everybody should know that these matters are —— —— and make people reply in exasperation! Have you got any idea how infuriated I was? It is —— —— trying to control oneself in situations like this, but I did my best!

A: For sure! Last night, he —— —— —— —— about me too, but I kept my cool. But I could take it no more and stormed out when his girlfriend said “that was ——-!” and started laughing her head off.

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View other links:
1-Fun activities.

2-Fun English.

3-Fun Puzzles.

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C-A course content for the co-curriculum activities:

1-Classroom Activity 1

2-Classroom Activity 2

3-Classroom Activity 3

4-Classroom Activity 4

5-Classroom Activity 5

6-Classroom Activity 6