Integrating theory and practice in a workshop course on ...



Integrating theory and practice in a workshop course on language and humour

Dan McIntyre, Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language

Abstract

Integrating pedagogical theory with classroom practice is something that can often be difficult to manage. In this article I describe some of the issues surrounding this in relation to a four week workshop course on language and humour that I have taught in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, Lancaster University. I consider the design of the course and how far this is influenced by theories of teaching, and I pay particular attention to the issue of assessment and how this might be improved through critical reflection and the integration of pedagogical theory.

1. Language and Humour

In 2000 I was asked to contribute to LING 130 English Language, a course currently offered in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language. LING 130 is a full-unit course that runs for the full academic year. Having completed two terms of lectures and seminars, in the third term students are offered a range of workshop options from which they must choose one course to attend. The workshops are less rigidly structured than the lectures and seminars and are designed to allow students to pursue interests in areas of language and linguistics which are not covered within the first two terms’ lectures and seminars. I was asked to contribute a 4-week workshop course to this programme and was told that this could be on any subject that I thought would interest Part I students. I decided to run a course that would investigate the relationships between language and humour for several reasons:

1. No existing course in the department concentrated on this area.

2. Investigating language and humour stylistically was a natural follow-on from LING 131 (a Part I introduction to stylistics which a considerable number of LING 130 students would have taken) and provided students with a further opportunity to practise stylistic analysis. This would be beneficial to those students considering taking the Part II stylistics course.

3. I felt that humour would be a popular option amongst Part I students.

I have now run the workshop for two years. The course outline is as follows:

LANGUAGE AND HUMOUR

In this workshop we’ll be exploring how humour is created in texts. We’ll start by looking at how humour is constructed linguistically in some small-scale examples – jokes, one liners etc. Then we’ll go on to consider some of the psychological theories of humour and see how these relate to the linguistic structure of humorous texts. We’ll look at how this works in some examples from films, sketches and plays. Following the first workshop, you will be divided into groups and will have to choose your own text to work on. In the second workshop you will be asked to describe your text and come up with a research question. You will then work on an analysis of your text with your group. In the third session you will continue working on your analysis. We will also discuss ways of structuring your work, and consider what makes a good presentation. In the final session your group will give a short presentation on your text.

(LING 130 English Language: Language and Humour workshop summary)

The course aims to give students the linguistic tools they need in order to be able to analyse humorous texts and explain why such texts make people laugh. The course builds on theories of stylistic analysis that some of the students will have studied in course LING 131 in Lent term, but in this course I also consider psychological theories of humour and how these might relate to close linguistic analysis. Because of the link with LING 131, I make the proviso that students taking the Language and Humour option must have studied LING 131 Language and Style previously. This, in fact, turns out to be a useful criterion for restricting numbers, since for the two years that I have run the course it has always been over-subscribed. This in itself seems evidence for the fact that this is a popular option amongst students. In appendix A I provide a teaching session preparation form, and in appendix B a running plan. These are both for the first session only, since the remaining sessions are necessarily less rigidly structured.

2. Considerations in course design

The general idea behind the workshop courses is that this is an opportunity for students to engage in some research of their own, rather than being teacher-led. Because of this, I was keen not to turn the course into a traditional lecture. I wanted students to be able practise new skills and be able to apply them in stylistic analysis, and I wanted them to be actively involved in the session. A further consideration I had was due to the nature of the course material. I thought that a more intimate teaching situation would work better for discussing humour. I felt that given the course content, students would need to feel fairly comfortable in order to appreciate the material, and that a small-group situation would be more conducive to establishing what Sarwar (2001) terms ‘rapport’ – something he suggests as being an important factor in motivating learning. However, because this was an area which none of the students were familiar with, I was faced with the problem of how to put across the new material. I decided that I would run the first session of the course as a cross between a lecture and a seminar. I hoped that by doing this I would be able to convey the new information that the students needed in order to carry out the relevant kind of textual analysis, and that I would also be able to involve them to a large degree in the session. The next two sessions, though, would be entirely student-led. My aim here was that students should find a text to work on, analyse this in groups and begin to put together a 10 minute presentation based on this analysis, which they would then present to the rest of the group in the fourth week. I discussed this with the course-convenor of LING 130 who agreed on this structure.

Having decided on the structure of the course, I was then faced with the decision of how best to present the material. Because the students had already taken LING 131 I was able to assume some basic knowledge of stylistics on their part. However, I wanted to reinforce this without it being tedious for the students. I decided that I would begin by looking at very simple jokes, choosing those that best exploited particular linguistic levels. Doing this meant that I avoided having to re-explain stylistic theory, as it became apparent which linguistic level was prominent as the students worked together to analyse the jokes. Using small-scale examples was also advantageous as this resulted in fairly simple analyses. This meant that the students felt they could provide their own explanations for the jokes, and were not put off as they might have been if they had had to cope with longer, more complicated analyses. I then gave the students a handout containing a number of different styles of jokes, and asked them to choose four or five and explain which language levels were being exploited in each. I timed this for approximately 20 minutes into the session, where I felt that students would need a change of activity, in order to retain their attention (see Horgan 1999 for a discussion into student attention span and its implications). The following are a selection of the jokes the students were analysing:

EXAMPLE 1

Two fish in a tank. One says to the other, ‘Do you know how to drive this thing?’

[This joke exploits a lexical ambiguity. We initially think that ‘tank’ refers to the water-filled, glass container that fish are kept in, until the word ‘drive’ fills in the missing contextual information and we realise that the two fish are actually in a motorised combat vehicle!]

EXAMPLE 2

A teenager who snatched an 84-year old woman’s handbag has been sent to a young offenders’ institution for a year. Graham admitted stealing the handbag containing £80 and a moped.

(The Cumberland News, March 31, 2000)

[This unintentional joke exploits a syntactic ambiguity. In the sentence ‘Graham admitted stealing the handbag containing £80 and a moped’, the object is composed of two co-ordinated noun phrases - ‘the handbag containing £80’ and ‘a moped’. However, it is also possible to analyse the object as being simply ‘the handbag’, and ‘containing £80 and a moped’ as post-modifying this noun phrase. This analysis makes it appear that the moped was actually in the handbag!]

Once the students had spent some time analysing simple jokes I extended the task by asking some of them to volunteer to come to the front of the class, write their joke on an OHP slide and briefly explain their analysis to the rest of the class. My reason for doing this was, again, to encourage a student-led workshop and also to introduce to the students to the notion of presenting their work to others.

I was keen to vary the ways in which I introduced the various new concepts to the students, in order to retain their interest (cf. Breen and Short 1988, McIntyre forthcoming, Short and Breen 1988, Rashid 2001). To explain the concept of incongruity theory (briefly, the idea – proposed by Kant and Schopenhauer - that we laugh at something that deviates from our expectations), I used a clip from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a film about an ordinary man living in Judea at the same time as Christ, who is mistakenly assumed to be the messiah. Below is a transcript of the sequence:

CONTEXT: Brian, a revolutionary in the Judean People’s Front, has escaped from Pontius Pilate’s palace and is being chased by Praetorian Guards. Seeing a nearby tower, he dashes into it with the aim of eluding his pursuers:

Brian dashes up the tower’s spiral staircase. Cut to an exterior shot of the roof of the tower where a workman is absent-mindedly fixing the roof. His daydreaming causes him to drop his hammer, which falls to the ground.

Workman: Hmm? Oh.

Whistling, the workman begins to descend the tower to retrieve his hammer. Cut to the interior of the tower again – the workman is surprised to see Brian running up the stairs, hotly pursued by the Praetorian Guards. As the music reaches a crescendo Brian reaches the top of the tower and runs out on to the roof. However, his speed makes it impossible for him to stop, and he teeters on the edge of the tower before falling towards the ground.

Brian: Aaaaaaah!

Suddenly there is a ‘whooshing’ sound and a cut-out animated space-ship rushes into the frame and picks up Brian just as he is about to hit the ground. Cut to the interior of the space-ship.

Alien 1: Aggz.

Alien 2: Rozak kaibak.

The space-ship tears along, sounding like an over-heating Formula One racing car. Then a siren is heard. Cut to an exterior shot and we see a cut-out animated ‘police-ship’ chasing the aliens and Brian.

Alien 2: Agk! Grohtch. Ak!

All at once we hear an alarming sound. The engines of the space-ship begin to whine and screech as it plummets towards the earth. It hits the ground with an almighty crash, observed by a passer-by. Pause for a few seconds before Brian walks unscathed from the wreckage.

Passer-by: Ooh, you lucky bastard.

(Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Handmade Films, 1979)

I chose this sequence for several reasons:

1. It illustrates well the concept of incongruity – i.e. we do not expect to see a space-ship in a biblical film, our background knowledge about science-fiction films means that we do not expect a space-ship to sound like a racing car, we do not expect the passer-by to use such anachronistic language, etc.

2. It is from a film that is likely to appeal to an undergraduate audience.

3. I was able to show the video clip in addition to giving the students a transcript.

After I had shown this clip I then asked the students what was incongruous about the scene, again to generate interactivity. The activity worked well with students keen to respond (indeed, many found incongruities that I had missed).

To illustrate the concept of superiority theory I used another video clip, this time from the popular BBC sitcom Blackadder, for reasons similar to those described in points 1-3 above. And to explain release theory I used a joke from a stand-up comedian. With each example I asked the students how the theory being explained could account for the humour in that particular case.

Having introduced the psychological theories of humour, my next concern was to show has these linked up with the linguistic structure of particular jokes to generate humour. To demonstrate this, I returned to the joke about the two fish in a tank, to explain that the lexical ambiguity over the word ‘tank’ (which led to hearers imagining a situation in which two fish were attempting to drive one), generated incongruity. Our schematic knowledge of the world tells us that fish do not drive tanks, hence the suggestion that this might be the case is incongruous with what we know to be the case, and humour comes about as a result.

The final part of the session was an attempt to get students to practise the sort of analysis we had been doing on a longer stretch of text. I chose this activity because this was what I was asking the students to do as assessment for the course. The activity brought together everything I had talked about in the session and allowed the students to see how the techniques we had been discussing in isolation could be used together to explain how humour is generated in written texts.

The following three sessions in the course were less formal and involved students analysing texts of their own choosing. Some students chose to work in the library whilst others wanted to discuss their work with me. In the session before the students’ final presentations we began by discussing what makes a good presentation, and talking about ways of structuring the students’ analyses into 10 minute presentations. As Cartwright (1997) points out, very often it is taken for granted that students simply know how to write essays/do exams/make presentations, and because of this I was keen to ensure that students felt prepared enough to undertake the form of assessment I had decided on.

3. Assessment

So far I have concentrated on the design of the first session of the course, with some commentary on how my intuitive decisions about how to organise it are based on research into pedagogy. In this section I want to concentrate more closely on making a direct link between theory and what goes on in the classroom, and the ways in which this can be used to improve teaching practice. I discuss these issues in relation to how I assessed students’ performance on the Language and Humour course.

The choice as to what form the assessment should take was again left largely up to me, though other tutors on the course assessed their students by group presentations. I decided that I would do the same and made the decision based on the following criteria:

1. Since the course was so short I felt an essay was an unreasonable amount of work to expect from students.

2. I wanted to be able to assess how well students were able to apply what they had discovered, rather than simply test their knowledge of the theory.

3. I wanted to give students a practical experience that would also be useful outside academia. To this end I wanted students:

a) to gain experience of working in a team

b) to develop their presentation skills

4. Due to the fact that Part I examinations followed soon after the Language and Humour course, I needed a form of assessment that would be quick to mark, and would not take up too much of the students’ revision time.

To address these issues, I decided that groups of three students should make a 10 minute presentation of the analysis they had done, and that this would be marked by myself and the Part 1 English Language Co-ordinator at the time. I took this decision fairly intuitively without recourse to research on assessment. The presentations went ahead, and were generally of a high standard, with some being very accomplished. However, although I was able to comment on the presentations, I found it extremely difficult to put a mark on them. It also became clear through talking to the second marker that we both had slightly different ideas about what it was that we were assessing. It is at this juncture that pedagogical theory becomes particularly useful, and having turned to this I was able to understand more clearly why the task of assessment had proved to be so difficult in this case. Toohey’s (1999) research on assessment is particularly useful. Toohey (1999: 180) proposes four main points to consider when deciding on the most suitable form of assessment to use, to ensure that this is appropriate to the types of learning that is being assessed. Briefly, these are:

• Validity (the extent to which the assessment reflects the learning goals of the course).

• Reliability (The extent to which the assessment can be trusted; i.e. whether the same work assessed by different examiners would achieve a similar result).

• Support (the extent to which the assessment supports and promotes real learning).

• Cost (the extent to which the assessment is practical in financial terms).

Looking back at my original list of criteria, I can see that what I was responding to most when deciding on what form the assessment should take was the ‘support’ element. I was keen that students should feel that what they were being asked to do would have a practical benefit for them, both in terms of their general development as learners (i.e. learning the new skill of presenting) and their development as linguists. I was also reacting subconsciously to Toohey’s ‘validity’ point; I wanted students to be able to do an analysis of a text, rather than test whether or not they had remembered every aspect of the course. I wanted them to demonstrate what they had learned and were interested in, rather than show up what they had not taken on board (as might have happened in a summative test).

What I had not considered adequately enough, however, was the ‘reliability’ element. Although I had a list of criteria on which I was marking the presentations, it would seem that these were not explicit enough. I was looking for evidence of teamwork and a good presentation style, as well as academic rigour, but in retrospect I should have expressed this in much clearer terms to ensure that both myself and the second marker were both judging the presentations with the same criteria. In future presentations of the course I would hope to concretise these criteria and break them down into more detailed decisive factors after discussing them with the second marker beforehand, in order to make my assessment more rigorous and fairer for the students.

Points 1 and 4 of my original list of criteria do not appear to fit within Toohey’s (1999) proposals. I would suggest that Toohey’s ‘cost’ element might be broadened to form a ‘contextual features’ category, which would take in not just cost but other practical considerations too, such as time constraints on both staff and students. My points 1 and 4 would then fit within this category, and these too are important points to consider when devising forms of assessment, as Ramsden (1992: 192) points out.

4. Summary

I approached the design of the Language and Humour course and the issue of assessment fairly intuitively, and I would suggest that this is initially the best way of going about it (indeed, I suspect that this is what most of us do). However, becoming more aware of some of the pedagogical theory behind what I was attempting to do enabled me to improve my practice. The difficulty in doing this lies with assessing which areas of pedagogical practice need developing. Integrating theory with actual classroom practice turned out to be a more straightforward process once I had discovered which areas of my teaching were lacking. I found that looking at theories of assessment allowed me work out where I was going wrong in practical terms. I would suggest that integrating theory and practice is a bi-directional process, and that for it to be successful, the one should always inform the other. In terms of how to improve the course from here, it id clear that something needs to be done to make the final session (in which the students present their work) more interactive for all the students concerned and not just those who happen to be presenting at the time. To do this I would like to consider introducing an element of peer-assessment, in order to involve students when they are not presenting, in an effort to retain their interest and attention. Although it would be necessary to retain some degree of control over this (to avoid unfair marking) it is possible that this too would improve the form of assessment, and the overall learning experience for students, since, as Stone Wiske (1999: 241) points out, ‘Learning advances from assessing one’s own and others’ performances in relation to clear criteria. In this way assessment both enhances and evaluates learning.’ Introducing this element to the course would be a further motivation to concretise the criteria on which the students’ presentation should be judged.

References

Breen, M. P. and Short, M. (1988) ‘Alternative approaches in teaching stylistics to beginners.’ Parlance 1, 2, pp. 29-48.

Cartwright, N. (1997) Assessment and Feedback: A Handbook for Tertiary Teachers. Ballarat: University of Ballarat.

Horgan, J, (1999) ‘Lecturing for learning.’ in Fry, H., Ketteridge, S. and Marshall, S. (eds) A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. London: Kogan Page Ltd.

McIntyre, D. (forthcoming) ‘Using foregrounding theory as a teaching methodology in a stylistics course.’ Style 37:1.

Ramsden, P. (1992) Learning to Teach in Higher Education. London: Routledge.

Rashid, A. (2001) ‘Lecturing to large groups: good practice guidelines.’ TALL Tales, June.

Sarwar, Z. (2001) ‘Adapting individualization techniques for large classes.’ In Hall, D. R. and Hewings, A. (eds) Innovation in English Language Teaching. London: Routledge.

Short, M. and Breen, M. P. (1988) ‘Innovations in the teaching of literature: putting stylistics in its place.’ Critical Quarterly 30, 2, pp. 1-8.

Stone Wiske, M. (1999) ‘What is teaching for understanding?’ in Leach, J. and Moon, B. (eds) Learners and Pedagogy. London: OUP/Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd. pp. 230-246

Toohey, S. (1999) Designing Courses for Higher Education. Buckingham: SHRE/Open University Press.

APPENDIX A

Teaching Session Preparation

|Title /topic of session |

|LING 130 English Language: Language and Humour |

|Day/time/room for session |

|Wednesday 2 May, 10.00 – 12.00, B80, Linguistics Department, Bowland College |

|Session in context of whole course |

|1st session of a 4 week workshop course |

|Student group and profile (number, experience, background, diversity etc) |

|Approx. 30 students, mostly 18/19 yr olds. Some experience of stylistics and pragmatics. |

|Type of session (formal lecture, seminar, practical, workshop, etc) |

|Workshop – combining lecture and seminar elements. |

What are the overall aims and objectives for this session in the context of the whole course?

I aim to show students how they can apply linguistic techniques in textual analysis in order to understand how humour is created in texts. I also aim to introduce 3 major psychological theories of humour, and show how we can use these in conjunction with a linguistic analysis to comprehensively explain how humour is constructed in texts. As a result of demonstrating this, I want students to be able to go away, choose their own texts, analyse them, and finally give a short presentation on their work in week 4.

What might be the intended learning outcomes for this session – what do I specifically want the students to be able to do, know or understand better as a result of this session?

I want students to understand the 3 psychological theories of humour that I will introduce, and be confident about applying them in a textual analysis. I want them to be able to define a research question which they will be able to answer through an analysis of their own chosen text. I also want to reinforce stylistic theories of analysis which the students should already know.

How am I going to know how far these intended outcomes have been achieved?– how will I be able to assess the students’ learning in/from this session? how will the students know?

I will explain the stylistic theories of language and then check that students have understood by getting them to work in groups and do their own analyses. I will monitor the discussions and ask various students to present their analyses to the class.

After I have introduced the psychological theories I will check student understanding by again asking them to produce their own short analyses of a text, in order to see whether they can adequately apply the theories.

I will explain to the students what I am trying to teach them and why. Ultimately, I will be able to assess students’ learning when I mark their presentations in week 4.

APPENDIX B

Running Plan of the Session

| |Approx. time |Teaching and Student activity |Notes |

| | | | |

| |10.00 | | |

|1 | |LECTURE – Introduce course, explain aims, talk briefly about |Explain why we want them to give |

| | |final presentations. |presentations. |

| |10.10 | | |

|2 | |LECTURE – What is humour? Linguistic levels in the analysis of | |

| | |humour. | |

| |10.30 | | |

|3 | |TASK – Ask students to choose from a list of jokes and decide | |

| | |which linguistic levels are being exploited to create humour. | |

| | |Monitor discussions. Ask various students to present their | |

| | |analyses. | |

| | | | |

| |10.50 |BREAK | |

|4 | | | |

| | | | |

| |11.00 |LECTURE – Psychological theories of humour |Explain why we need to use |

|5 | | |psychological theories alongside |

| | | |linguistic analyses. |

| | | | |

| | | |Life of Brian example (VIDEO). |

| | |Incongruity Theory – explain first and then show video example. | |

| | |Ask students to explain the incongruity in the example. | |

| | | |Blackadder example (VIDEO). |

| | |Superiority Theory – explain first and then show video. Ask | |

| |11.15 |questions and explain discourse structure of example, to show | |

|6 | |how superiority theory works on 2 levels. | |

| | | |Joke example |

| | |Release Theory – explain with example. | |

| | | |Emphasise how students’ analyses |

| |11.25 |Relate theories to linguistic structure of jokes we originally |need to take account of both |

|7 | |looked at. |linguistic and psychological aspects|

| |11.30 | |of texts. |

|8 | | | |

| | | | |

| | | |Frog and Peach example (CASSETTE). |

| | | | |

| | |Play Frog and Peach sketch. | |

| | | | |

| |11.35 | | |

|9 | |TASK – ask students to pick out jokes exploiting different | |

| | |linguistic levels. Then ask them to explain these by applying | |

| |11.40 |theories of humour. | |

|10 | | | |

| | |CONCLUDE – Explain what students should do between now and next | |

| | |session. Point out texts, readings and other linguistic features| |

| | |to look at. | |

| |11.50 | | |

|11 | | | |

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