BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi for Giving Listening Exposure to Students: A View from Humour Perspective

BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi for Giving Listening Exposure Indonesian Journal of EFL and Linguistics Vol. 2 No. 2, 2017 eISSN: 2503-4197, pISSN: 2527-5070 www. indonesian-efl-journal.org BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi for Giving Listening Exposure to Students: A View from Humour Perspective Anastasia Nelladia Cendra Sanata Dharma University, Indonesia e-mail: Abstract: Using authentic materials to give listening exposure is essential to improve English language learners’ listening skill and using radio is one way to do so. To reduce anxiety in listening, choosing humorous material can be done as humour has been proven beneficial in classroom context, for example, in reducing stress. Using the partial result of a study conducted by the same author and completed by library study about ethics of using humour in the classroom, this study is to investigate whether verbal humour found in BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi is suitable to be used in classroom context. Analysing every type verbal humour found in the radio drama, this study points out that verbal humour found in BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi is generally not appropriate to be used in classroom because it has a quite high number of inappropriate verbal humour, such as sarcasm and satire. Keywords: listening exposure, verbal humour, appropriateness Indonesian Journal of EFL and Linguistics, 2(2), 2017 107 BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi for Giving Listening Exposure 1. INTRODUCTION Learning English involves learning four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Ridel (2003) argues that among these skills, listening is considered the hardest skill to be learnt (as cited in Hapsari & Ratri, 2013). To overcome this, it is suggested that authentic materials of listening are given to the students, even from the beginning of a language course, in order to give the students benefits of naturalness and real-life listening experience; listening to authentic materials exposes students with natural accent, speed, and meaning (Field, 2002). Exposure to authentic listening material will make the students accustomed to listening to realworld English. This kind of exposure in listening will likely to make the students get used to listening to the target language and generally improve their listening skill. However, students are usually afraid of listening to authentic materials. (Hapsari & Ratri, 2013). It can be caused by students’ lack of familiarity to the accents and speech speed of the speakers. Some students may be unprepared and lost in confusion. Nevertheless, it is should be really emphasized from the beginning that the goal is not to understand the whole recording and its little details (Hapsari & Ratri, 2013), but to focus on giving exposure to make students accustomed to how real-world listening is like. Speaking about authentic materials, radio is one of the media that can be used to give authentic listening exposure to students. It has been known from a long time that radio may become a media for learning English. Even, in the time around World War II, there was such interest in a lot of countries to listen to the radio while learning English through BBC broadcasts (Howse, 1979). Listening to radio programmes in English will eventually influence someone’s ability in listening. In addition, audio programs can fulfil the need of providing learning materials that bring English live for the students, as what English teachers all over the world dream over (Tomalin, 1979). Many broadcasts in radio, either scripted or unscripted can also be used as English learning materials (Dunkling, 1979). It has been known that even more advanced programme can still be useful for more advanced learner to help them keep up their knowledge of the language (Tomalin, 1979). Furthermore, it has been known that if the language programmes in radio are selectively used, the learning will become more effective and meaningful and students’ mastery in vocabulary and pronunciation can be increased (Odera, n.d.). Selecting appropriate listening materials, by no means, is an easy task. There are so many considerations that the teacher should make in selecting the listening materials to give listening exposure to the students. Apart from the content of the material, teachers should also be smart in choosing the materials for the students that may reduce students’ anxiety in listening, as it has been explained that students may be daunted by authentic listening materials. One that can be done is by using humour in giving the listening exposure. There is a growing body of research that emphasises the importance of using humour in the classroom. The use of humour in the classroom may able to create a more conducive environment for classroom activity and help students learn the Indonesian Journal of EFL and Linguistics, 2(2), 2017 108 BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi for Giving Listening Exposure material easier and more efficient (Pham, 2014). In addition, humour experiences can also provide positive emotions to enhance attention in learning (Krause, 2014). Krause also summarizes that in EFL classroom context, humour can also help reduce students’ anxiety in learning the target language so that the students will be more engaged with the learning (Krause, 2014). Furthermore, it is also believed that humour may reduce many student’ disruptions. In the same light, humour in many ways can be the direct ammunition for students rooted in anger, anxiety, and low self-esteem (Goebel, 1958). Thus, it is safe to say that humour brings positive vibes for teaching-learning activity in the classroom. BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi is a radio drama based on everyday talk that can be used to give exposure of English to students in enjoyable way. It also provides students with authentic English, spoken by native speakers. The sound produced is also clear. Moreover, the fact that the radio drama is humorous might give positive reinforcement that makes the learning more fun. Based on the background, BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi might be the perfect source to give English exposure for students in learning English as a foreign language. This research, however, aims to investigate whether the verbal humour found in BBC Radio Drama Series Cabin Pressure: Abu Dhabi is appropriate for English language teaching. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Verbal Humour and Its Types Before going on deeper about verbal humour, it would be better if we understand humour first. Humour can be defined as something funny that elicits laughter, smiles, or amusement. However, some problems arise when we want to define humour. Some people may laugh at something; some people may only smile. Yet, the others do not even find it funny at all. Indeed, humour is a difficult concept to describe. Nevertheless, in general, humour refers to anything t (...truncated)