Lessons
with
Laughter
George Woolard
LANGUAGEsccentantepectte coe
Introduction
Lessons with humour
Moet reaching materials are not humorous. If there is humour in the classroom, it comes from
sro ttacher and the students, Lessons with Laughter js designed to Dring humour into your
Tessone, When students find something humorous, their learning becomes OT enjoyable and
their motivation increases, The lessons in the four sections of this book bring humour and
English together,
Let them discover the humour
You cannot teach humour, If you have to explain it, 5 n> Jonger funny. The secret of the
lessons in this book is to allow your students to discover the humour for themselves. Most
often humour grows out of a language situation with more than one meaning ~ usually there
isa well-known literal meaning plus a metaphorical meaning. Your role as teacher is not to
lead your students by the hand through the ‘wonderful world of British humour. Your role is
to set up lessons where students can discover meaning for themselves: you will need to give
them time to do this, You may explain the odd word. You will definitely encourage the use of
dictionaries, And you will monitor the ourcome of the problem-solving activities. If some in
the class cannot see the joke, it 1s better to let the others in the class explain it - even if they
have to do so in their own language. Resist the rempration to be the class comedian.
This is serious learning
When you find something amusing, you are more liable to remember it. When students
vFraee new meanings for themselves, they are more likely to remember them because they
Taughed. This means that language items contained in humorous exes more likely to be
retained than if you had simply taught them in a conventional way Students will want to
retell the jokes and stories to other students, thereby reinforcing their learning
A Lexical Approach
Move and mote teachers are seeing the advantages of raking a lexical approach to language.
“The jokes and stories in this book axe full of useful word partnerships, fixed expressions, and
sentence heads.
Four sections
The four sections of lessons exploit the four common types of humorous text:
1 Jokes - understanding double meaning
2 Cartoons ~ predicting and understanding captions
3. Misprints finding and understanding them
4+ Reading for Fun ~ graded funny stories with an amusing last line
“The lessons and the sections are not designed to be used in any particular order. This book is
4 resource from which you can draw whatever you find suitable “The lessons in sections 1 ~ 3
are fillers’ which you can use whenever you feel she need for something lighter. The Reading
for Fun Section contains one page stories, many of which will take a whole lesson to read and
exploit. The Misprints and Reading sections make morivating homework.
the che author of this material, I have heard much laughter in my classes. I hope your classes
will have as much fun as mine have had.
George Woolard
Edinburgh 1996Contents
Section One: Jokes
Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4
Lesson 5
Lesson 6
Lesson 7
Lesson 8
Lesson 9
Lesson 10
Lesson 11
Lesson 12
Lesson 13
Lesson 14
Lesson 15
Lesson 16
Lesson 17
Lesson 18
Lesson 19
Lesson 20
Lesson 21
Lesson 22
Lesson 23
Lesson 24
Lesson 25
Lesson 26
Lesson 27
Lesson 28
Lesson 29
Idioms
Phrasal Verbs
Word Partnerships
Puns
Homophones
Unusual Expressions
Missing Words
Moving Stress
Misunderstandings
Books and their Authors
Present Perfect Jokes
Conditional Jokes
Comparative Jokes
Jokes with SO. . . THAT
The Best Way
Misunderstanding Grammar
Questions with HOW
Questions with WHY
Any Suggestions?
What’s the Context?
Insulting Remarks
Definitions
Paradoxical Jokes
What's the Difference?
‘Waiter! Waiter!
Doctor! Doctor!
Making Fun of Teachers!
Alphabet Jokes
Elephant Jokes
Section Two: Cartoons
Lesson 30
Lesson 31
Lesson 32
Lesson 33
Lesson 34
Lesson 35
Lesson 36
Lesson 37
Lesson 38
What’s Missing 1
What’s Missing 2
What's Missing 3
What Happens Next 1
What Happens Next 2
What Happens Next 3
What's the Caption 1
What's the Caption 2
What’s the Caption 3
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