Student Joke-Telling through Modification of Input Materials
Richard HODSON

Abstract
As part of an ongoing investigation into the responses of EFL learners to English humour,
38 university students were asked to rewrite two English jokes selected from among aseries of humorous input texts linked to functions and topics being studied in class.
Learner joke output showed considerable variation in content and was largely successful
in maintaining the humorous basis of the input texts, although a significant number of
responses to the second joke indicated that writers had not fully understood thegrammatical complexity of the original. Students were then asked to rate the output of
their peers in terms of difficulty and humorous appeal. 74 student joke-ratings wereobtained in each category, with student output, in the case of both jokes, being rated asboth less difficult, and funnier than, the original jokes. With the exception of responses
that relocated the original setting of the first joke from America to Japan, most major
variations did not seem to have a significant impact on ratings. As well as the limitationsof the current study, factors that might explain the overall difference in ratings, especiallythe role of affect and increased familiarity with content schema, are discussed.
Key words: humour, jokes, learner output, peer-rating

1 Introduction and research background
Recent research has begun to make the case for the introduction and use of materials
incorporating creative language play in the English language classroom (notably Cook, 2000), tosuggest some of their potential benefits, and to provide both practical applications of humorous
materials, and broad guidelines for their use in both first language (e.g. Spector, 2009) and EFL/ESL contexts (e.g. Medgyes, 2002; Gardner, 2008). Hodson (2008a) found that the potentiallyhuge range of linguistic, content, cultural and humour-related variables present in authentic
humorous texts, specifically English jokes, may make the task of selecting and sequencing
specific materials for language learners a crucial but difficult one. Hodson (2008b andforthcoming) investigated learner responses to and creation of humorous texts−specifically,
newspaper cartoon captions−in which format and content were controlled, and found thatstudents had considerable success in creating original and entertaining English output. This paper
describes part of an ongoing study to investigate further the factors that affect learner response tohumorous texts, in accordance with Gardner’s suggestion that humour in the language classroom
should be ‘purposeful and not merely entertaining’ (2008: 12-13). The investigation aims to: a)―９７―

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control input text content and sequencing by linking the choice of materials to language functions
and topics already being studied in class; and b) encourage learners to manipulate input texts tocreate their own humorous output and share it with peers. This paper presents a preliminary
analysis of the content and peer-rating of student output, in the form of two English jokes.

2 Participants
The participants in this study were 38 first-year students, in two classes of 20 (C1) and 18 (C2)respectively, majoring in international relations and cross-cultural communication in a public
university in Japan. Of the 38 participants, only 16 in each class were present on the day that thefirst activity described in this paper was carried out, generating 32 valid responses, in the form ofmodifications of jokes provided as input texts. Of the 32 respondents, 27 were female and fivemale; 28 students were Japanese, and four Chinese. For the second activity, which was carried out
only with C1, responses were obtained from all 20 students (15 female, 5 male; 17 Japanese, 3
Chinese).

3 Input materials
3.1 Selection and rating systemStudents were presented with 22 English jokes (21 jokes in the case of C2) over the course of one
semester, during their English oral communication class. The jokes were chosen and sequenced totie in with language forms and functions occurring in the class textbook (Helgesen, Brown &Mandeville, 2004), which itself contains the question ‘Can you tell a joke in English?’ as an
option within its final review activity, but which does not provide substantial input texts or
structured productive activities explicitly focusing on this area of communicative competence.
Joke texts came from a variety of sources and were subjected to minimal modification of
language and content, and in 12 cases, no modification at all. Students were asked to rate the text
difficulty and funniness/humour of each joke, using a five-point scale modelled on Stock andStrappavara (2002), with difficulty ratings of 1 (very easy), 2 (easy), 3 (so-so), 4 (difficult) and 5(very difficult), and funniness ratings of 1 (not funny), 2 (not very funny), 3 (mildly funny), 4(funny) and 5 (very funny). Funniness ratings on each handout were illustrated with small faces
showing expressions ranging from a frown to a broad grin.
3.2 Jokes for student modification: linguistic features
Jokes 12, 17 and 22 were presented as opportunities for student rewriting and retelling. Joke 22
required only the substitution of any long, hard-to-spell English word for the ‘Constantinople’ ofthe original, and student output was not collected. Joke 12 (referred to hereafter as the ‘CarnegieHall joke’) is a traditionally popular joke widely available in a number of variations, andconstructed for class use as:
A tourist in New York realises that he’s lost, and asks a passer-by: ‘How do you get toCarnegie Hall?’ The passer-by replies: ‘Practice, practice, practice!’in order to coincide with class study of the language function of asking for directions. Joke 17―９８―Richard HODSON：Student Joke-Telling through Modification of Input Materials(referred to hereafter as the ‘doctor joke’) is also widely available in a number of variations, andwas chosen to accompany textbook focus on the theme of occupations:Patient: Is it serious, doctor?
Doctor: Well, if I were you I wouldn’t start watching any new TV serials.
Table 1 gives a summary of the main linguistic features of each joke.
Table 1: Linguistic features of two input jokes

tokensCarnegie Hall joke
doctor joke

26
19

word
forms
22
17

lexicaldensity85%
89%

Flesch Reading
Ease score
50
64

Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level
9
7

Both jokes are shorter than the average of 40 words reported by the Laughlab experiment (TheBritish Association for the Advancement of Science, 2002: 63). With contractions expanded,
proper nouns removed and spelling standardized to American English, all of the words in the‘Carnegie Hall joke’ appear in the Oxford 3000 list of important keywords. The ‘doctor joke’contains only one word (‘serials’) that does not appear in this list (Oxford 3000 Text Checker,
2008) but it should be noted that this word is crucial to a full understanding of the joke. The‘doctor joke’ appears to be a slightly more demanding text, particularly with regard to thegrammatical structure of its second sentence, but the ‘Carnegie Hall’ joke contains a major
cultural reference that required in-class explanation. The average student difficulty rating of theCarnegie Hall joke was 2.84 (between ‘easy’ and ‘so-so’), and of the ‘doctor joke’, 3.27 (between‘so-so’ and ‘difficult’).
3.3 Jokes for student modification: humour
The ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ derives its humorous effect from the linguistic ambiguity inherent in thequestion ‘How do you get to...?’ which the tourist intends (we assume) to mean ‘Could you tellme the way to...?’ and which the passer-by answers as if it meant ‘How do you gain entry, via
qualification or recognition of your talents, at...?’. In order for the joke to work, the tourist’s
destination needs to be both a geographical place and, metonymically, an institution withdemanding requirements for admission. There is further pragmatic ambiguity in the passer-by’s(deliberately or otherwise) answering the question as if it carried what is clearly, in thecircumstances, the less likely of the two possible interpretations, thereby breaking the Gricean
maxim of relation (Grice, 1975). The joke follows the ‘rule of three’ pattern found throughout
English humorous writing, with the punch line word ‘practice’ occurring three times.
There is no little or no linguistic ambiguity in the ‘doctor joke’ at word or sentence level. The
humorous effect comes rather from the contextual inappropriateness of the doctor’s response to
the patient’s question; viewed pragmatically, the doctor is arguably breaking Gricean maxims ofquantity and manner by speaking metaphorically. The joke can also be interpreted under thepsychic release theory of humour: emotionally charged and potentially taboo topics of short life
expectancy, terminal illness and death are hinted at in the metaphor of ‘watching... TV serials’, an
activity that requires a prolonged commitment, but not a very long one when seen in the context―９９―

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of a conversation on life expectancy between doctor and patient.

4 Student joke output
4.1 Instructions and tasks
Students were asked to rewrite each joke, tell it to their classmates, and to get peers to rate theirretellings using the same scales as for the original jokes. For the ‘Carnegie Hall joke’, theinstruction was ‘Can you rewrite this joke to make it easier for someone in Japan?’ with attention
being drawn to the American locations in the original. For the ‘doctor joke’, students were given
the original text as far as ‘... I wouldn’t’ and asked to write an original completion.
4.2 ‘Carnegie Hall joke’: content elements
Student retellings of the ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ showed variations in seven key elements of theoriginal: the nature and sex of the tourist; the location of the conversation (New York in theoriginal); the description of the passer-by; the tourist’s destination (originally Carnegie Hall); andthe punch line (originally, ‘Practice, practice, practice’). Location, destination and punch line arestrongly mutually interdependent, and it is on this combination that the success of the joke largely
depends.
There were only minor variations in areas other than these three key elements. Two students
chose to replace ‘tourist’ with another element. Their choices−‘child’ and ‘student’−clearlyretain the potential ignorance of location inherent in the original, and that is essential to the joke.
Although all but five of the 32 respondents were female, only two chose to make the tourist
female, with all five male, and the remaining 25 female respondents retaining the sex of theoriginal. Finally, one respondent expanded ‘passer-by’ to ‘Japanese passer-by’, but this variation
was combined with an anomalous location/destination combination (New York/Waseda
University). Tables 2-4 show content variation in three key areas of the student ‘Carnegie Halljoke’.
Japanese settings dominated, accounting for 26 locations and 27 destinations. Four locations andfour destinations (including one, ‘Sofiya’, for which precise identification has not been possible)
were set in China, although only three of each were produced by Chinese students, and the USA
Table 2: Student ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ location variations

location
Japan
Tokyo
China
Nagasaki
Hyogo
Osaka
New York, Kyoto, America, Kumamoto, Fukuoka

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occurrences
9
6
4
4
2
2
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Table 3: Student ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ destination variations

destination
Koushien Stadium
Budoukan
Tokyo University
Brick Hall
Mount Taishan
National Stadium
Olympic Stadium, Kabukiza, Yoshimoto, Kiyomizudera, Waseda University, Sofiya,
the White House, Tokyo Dome, Shokun-no-ma in Kumamoto Castle, Big N, Marine
Messe Fukuoka

occurrences
6
4
4
3
2
2
1 eachTable 4: Student ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ punch line variations

triple punch line

punch line
practicestudy
swing, endure, climb, learn, training

otheroccurrences
17
5
1 each5

featured in two locations (including the anomalous response referred to above) and one
destination. The majority of responses (16) featured sports-themed destinations such as Koushien
Baseball Stadium, followed by arts-themed destinations (six responses) such as Brick Hall, a
popular arts venue in Nagasaki, and two education-themed destinations (four responses), both
universities. The remaining six responses consisted of a variety of other types of destination.
The original ‘Practice, practice, practice’ was the most popular punch line, perhaps reflecting its
wide applicability to both sports and arts-related destinations; of its 17 occurrences, one omitted
the third ‘practice’. All other uses of the triple punch line used a simple present verb except one,but this one−‘Training, training, training’−seems perfectly acceptable if ‘training’ is interpreted
as a noun (as indeed the two most popular choices, ‘practice’ and ‘study’ can be). Four out of thefive punch lines that did not use a triple, repeating structure were used with destinations
characterized as ‘other’.
4.3 ‘Doctor joke’: content elements
Potential for student retelling of the ‘doctor joke’ was restricted to replacement of the verb phrase
following ‘Well, if I were you I wouldn’t’, in the original, ‘start watching any new TV serials’.
All 20 student responses successfully followed the auxiliary ‘wouldn’t’ with a main verb, and six
responses (30%) copied the ‘start−ing’ structure of the original. Table 5 shows the verbs chosen.
All 20 responses followed this verb with a complement, of which there was considerable variety,and a number of orthographical and minor grammatical errors. The most common themes, andthe only ones recurring, were planting flowers and plants (four occurrences) and reading the

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Table 5: Student ‘doctor joke’ verb choices

verb
start

reading
planting
watching

getgo to
make, build, eat, check, study for, plant, see, read, enter, sow

occurrences
3
2
1
2
2
1 each‘Harry Potter’ novels (three occurrences).
While all 20 responses were comprehensible, a significant number suggested that the writer had
not fully understood the ‘if I were you I wouldn’t’ structure of the original joke, in which use of
the second conditional is further complicated by the presence of the gerund ‘watching’. In thisstructure, the doctor advises the patient against beginning a long-term, potentially prolonged
activity, such as watching a TV serial, implying that the patient will not be able to see that activity
through to its conclusion because−as the context of the patient’s question further implies−thepatient’s medical condition is so serious that he or she will die before completing it. A confident
grasp of this structure can be seen in all six of the student responses that used the ‘start−ing’
pattern, and in six other student jokes, such as ‘I wouldn’t get ready for Christmas’ and ‘I
wouldn’t sow flower seeds in the garden’. These ‘I wouldn’t’ responses make up 60% of the total.
However, the nature of four of the responses (20%) suggests that the writers had interpreted ‘if I
were you I wouldn’t’ incorrectly, to mean ‘I predict that you won’t’, producing jokes such as ‘I
wouldn’t see tomorrow sun’ [sic] and ‘I wouldn’t eat the first rice crop of the year’, indicating afinite point in the future that it is implied that the patient will not live to see. The final four
responses (20%) −including ‘I wouldn’t enter the university’ and ‘I wouldn’t go to sleep tonight’−can be classified as ‘both/unclear’ as potentially supporting either interpretation.

5 Student rating of peer output
5.1 Student ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ ratings
The 32 student ‘Carnegie Hall jokes’ were rated by peers, giving 35 ratings at an average of 1.09
ratings per student. Three jokes were rated by two students each, with four students rating two
jokes, and one student writing, but not rating a joke. Each student gave an average rating forhumour of 4.29 (between ‘funny’ and ‘very funny’), with the original ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ having
been rated at 3.84 (between ‘mildly funny’ and ‘funny’), an increase of 12%. The averagedifficulty rating for student jokes was 2.02, compared to 2.84 for the original joke (both between‘easy’ and ‘so-so’), a decrease of 29%.
There was less variation in the difficulty ratings of the student joke (sd=0.76) than of the original
joke (sd=1.08), but a slightly greater variation in the humour ratings (student joke sd=0.90,

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Richard HODSON：Student Joke-Telling through Modification of Input Materials

original joke sd=0.72). This seems to be counter-intuitive, as we might expect that affective
factors would lead students to rate the output of their peers more consistently favourably−interms of humour−than the original joke. The presence of an outlier may be one explanation of
the apparent anomaly: only one student rated a peer’s joke as less than ‘mildly funny’, in fact,giving it the lowest possible rating of ‘not funny’ (1). Excluding that student’s data gives moreconsistent ratings: student difficulty (2.05) < original difficulty (2.81); student humour (4.40) >original humour (3.87); student difficulty sd (0.75) < original difficulty sd (1.08); and student
humour sd (0.67) also < original humour sd (0.72). However, it may not be wise to disregard
outliers when dealing with the highly personal judgement of rating humour; and the greater
amount of variation in rating student jokes may well be explicable by the simple fact that 32
different student jokes, and only one original text were being rated.
There was a relatively strong negative correlation between the difficulty and humour ratings ofthe original ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ (−0.69, with −0.79 in C1 and −0.71 in C2) but this did notseem to be true for the student jokes (−0.3, with 0.41 in C1 but −0.75 in C2). Combined resultsfor C1 and C2 showed no notable correlations between the difficulty ratings of the student andthe original joke, nor between the humour ratings of the two jokes.
Jokes which emulated the triple punch line of the original attracted a considerably lower difficulty
rating (1.83) than those five jokes that did not (3.40), but the humour ratings of both types weremuch closer (triple punch line=4.26; non-triple punch line: 4.40). Of those jokes that employed
the triple punch line, there was little difference in either difficulty or humour ratings between
those which employed the ‘Practice, practice, practice’ formula of the original joke and thosewhich used an original combination (practice: difficulty=1.82, humour=4.41; non-practice:difficulty=1.85, humour=4.00). However, jokes which used a Japanese destination recorded both
Table 6: Student ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ average difficulty and humour ratingsby content group１

all responses
triplenon-triple
practice
triple non-practice
destination
Japan(country)
non-Japan
destination
sports(theme)arts
educationotherpunch line１

responses
32
27
5
17
10
27
5
16
6
4
6

difficulty
2.08
1.83
3.40
1.82
1.85
1.93
2.90
1.88
2.00
1.50
3.08

humour
4.28
4.26
4.40
4.41
4.00
4.37
3.80
4.31
4.33
4.75
3.83

Here and in Table 7, figures for the ‘all responses’ category are ‘per-response’ ratings, whereas figures cited in the first paragraphs of 5.1 and 5.2 are ‘per-rater’ ratings; these are marginally different.

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a lower difficulty rating (1.93 < 2.90) and a higher humour rating (4.37 > 3.80) than the five jokesthat used a destination outside Japan. The six jokes whose destination was not clearly sports, arts
or education-related received noticeably higher than average ratings for difficulty (3.08) andlower than average ratings for humour (3.83), but it should be noted that there is considerable
overlap between this group, the group of jokes using a destination outside Japan, and the groupnot using the triple punch line, with two jokes appearing in all three groups, and a further four
appearing in two of the groups. Table 6 summarizes the average difficulty and humour ratings foreach content group.
5.2 Student ‘doctor joke’ ratings
The 20 student ‘doctor jokes’ were peer-rated, giving 39 ratings at an average of 1.95 ratings perstudent. Five students rated three jokes each, 10 students rated two jokes, four students rated only
one joke, and one student wrote but did not rate a joke. Each student gave an average rating forhumour of 4.46 (between ‘funny’ and ‘very funny’), with the original ‘doctor joke’ having been
rated at 2.80 (between ‘not very funny’ and ‘mildly funny’), an increase of 59%. The averagedifficulty rating for student jokes was 2.11, compared to 3.27 for the original joke (from between‘so-so’ and difficult’ to between ‘easy’ and ‘so-so’), a decrease of 35%.
Both in terms of difficulty and humour, student ratings of their peers’ jokes showed less variation
than their ratings of the original joke, with student difficulty sd (0.43) < original difficulty sd(0.70); and student humour sd (also 0.43) < original humour sd (0.56). There were no strong
correlations between the ratings of the original and the student ‘doctor jokes’, nor between the
difficulty and humour ratings of either joke.
There was little discernable difference in ratings between jokes that used a ‘start−ing’ structure(difficulty=2.25, humour=4.33) and those that did not (difficulty=2.04, humour=4.50); nor
between those jokes which clearly fit the ‘I wouldn’t’ pattern (difficulty=2.13, humour=4.50),
those which suggested a ‘you won’t’ interpretation (difficulty=2.13, humour=4.25), and thosewhich were categorised as ‘both/unclear’ (difficulty=2.00, humour=4.50). Although the small
Table 7: Student ‘doctor joke’ average difficulty and humour ratings bystructure and content group

all responses
verb structure
start -ing
non-start -ing
interpretation
I wouldn’t
you won’t
both/unclear
content
plant
Harry Potter
other

responses
20
6
14
12
4
4
4
3
13

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difficulty
2.10
2.25
2.04
2.13
2.13
2.00
2.13
2.33
2.04

humour
4.45
4.33
4.50
4.50
4.25
4.50
4.50
4.50
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Richard HODSON：Student Joke-Telling through Modification of Input Materials

number of identifiable content groups makes comparison in this area difficult, content also seems
to have little discernable effect on ratings. Table 7 summarizes the average difficulty and humour
ratings for each structure and content group.

6 Discussion
6.1 Factors affecting difficulty ratings
According to the ratings awarded, students found their peers’ modifications of both the ‘CarnegieHall joke’ and the ‘doctor joke’ to be not only less difficult, but also funnier than the original
jokes. In the absence of further, qualitative data, it is only possible to speculate as to the reasonsfor this, but a number of explanations can be suggested.
In terms of linguistic difficulty, and especially given the limited scope allowed for variation, it
does not appear that student output was actually significantly easier in the case of either joke.
Table 8 shows a comparison of the main linguistic features of the original jokes and student
variations.
Table 8: Linguistic features of input jokes and student output

Carnegie Hall joke
student CarnegieHall joke average
doctor joke
student doctor
joke average

tokensword
forms

lexicaldensity

FleschReading
Ease score

26

22

85%

50

FleschKincaid
Grade
Level
9

25

21

84%

46

10

99%

19

17

89%

64

7

95%

18

16

88%

58

7

99%

Oxford3000
100%

Instead, decreased perception of difficulty may be attributable most obviously to increased
familiarity with the material: the action of peer-rating a joke provided at least a third, and in somecases a fourth encounter with the joke pattern, basic linguistic structure and some of the
vocabulary involved, after reading the original joke for the first time, and after each student hadconstructed their own version. Another possible reason may be greater familiarity with content
schema, particularly in the case of the more culturally-specific ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ (although thisshowed a less dramatic decrease in its difficulty rating, albeit from a higher initial difficulty
rating): as noted in 5.1 above, difficulty ratings for Japan-set variations of the joke were lower
than variations set outside Japan.
6.2 Factors affecting humour ratings
More familiar content schema may also account for the higher humour ratings of the student
productions. The modification required in the ‘Carnegie Hall joke’ directed students to change thecontent of certain ‘slots’ (location, destination, punch line) in the joke ‘framework’, rather than

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the overall framework of the joke itself, retaining the linguistic ambiguity of the original. The
higher humour rating of the Japan-set variations would seem to support the possibility that
content is an important factor. However, results from the ‘doctor joke’ are not so easy to interpret.
Jokes that successfully emulated the ‘I wouldn’t’ pattern of the original did not score much higher
in terms of humour than those that seemed to be based on an incorrect ‘you won’t’ interpretationof the original, which modifies−although it does not fundamentally transform−the humorous
potential of the joke somewhat.
Affective factors involved in the process of peer-rating certainly cannot be discounted as an
explanation for higher humour ratings. It is intuitively highly plausible that feelings of sympathy,
learner-solidarity and perhaps even a certain amount of peer-pressure may have influenced
ratings, which were obtained during face-to-face encounters with the teller/writer of each joke,
whereas the original jokes were effectively authorless. Out of a total of 74 ratings of student‘Carnegie Hall’ and ‘doctor’ jokes, there was only one rating of ‘not funny’ and none of ‘not very
funny’, whereas 45 ratings of the original jokes produced five ‘not very funny’ ratings, althoughno ‘not funny’ ratings. It was not possible to control for affective factors during the class activities
themselves, although blind-rating of a selection of student texts, either by another group oflearners or − in combination with rating of the original jokes texts − by a group of native
speakers of English, might shed light on the extent to which humour ratings are a factor of
intrinsic, textual and humorous properties of a joke, and to which affective considerations play a
part.

7 Conclusion
In addition to the lack of blind-rating and of qualitative data that might shed a clearer light on thereasons behind the rating differences between original and student-modified jokes, this study islimited in size, in terms both of the number of participants and of ratings for each joke, and of theamount of humorous material under investigation, with the two input texts totalling only 45
words, and generating only 1159 words of student output.
As a pedagogical activity, judged by Gardner’s ‘purposeful and not merely entertaining’ criterion,
the success of this particular attempt to bring humorous materials into the EFL classroom isdifficult to judge. Three students in C1 chose to answer the textbook’s ‘Can you tell a joke inEnglish?’ question, using new material, during the end-of-semester review−an event
unprecedented in the writer’s eight previous class uses of the same textbook/review activity
without the additional provision of humorous texts−but this was not repeated with C2. The
presence of a certain amount of misunderstanding of the grammatical complexity of one of thejokes, and the lack of impact that this seems to have had on ratings, may suggest that student
assessments of peer output may not be entirely objective or reliable. Nevertheless, learners doseem to have been able to create their own English jokes, through modification of input materials,
that their peers said they found both funnier and less difficult than the originals.

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