As I mentioned in a previous post, as part of my responsibilities at South China Normal University I am teaching English to a class of undergraduate psychology majors. In theory, we meet once a week, though in practice this has never been the case due to rescheduling classes around holidays or my travels. I am supposed to grade the students, but I am given no guidelines on how to structure the class: I can teach whatever I want because just the experience of speaking English with me and listening to me speak English will be beneficial for their spoken English abilities.
This has been fairly stressful, but I've sought help from the students by asking what they want to learn about America and what components of the English language they want to focus on. One thing that came up when asking my students this was humor. Humor is notoriously difficult to translate and hard to understand across cultures and even though my students all watch a lot of American TV (honestly, I'm pretty sure almost all of them watch more hours than I do), they often have trouble understanding the jokes contained in them. For reference, the most popular shows that people watch here are "The Big Bang Theory," "2 Broke Girls," "Friends," and "Vampire Diaries."
So anyway, to help explain humor and help my students get a better sense of American contemporary society, I've decided to tell a joke at the beginning of each class, and then explain it, and, additionally, have them watch episodes of "Modern Family" for homework. The Joke of the Day has resulted in me telling such gems as "What did the fish say when it ran into the wall? Dam(n)!" and explaining the classes of "A ___ walks into a bar," and "Why did the chicken cross the road?" jokes. After some explanation, these are generally met with a few appreciative chuckles and nodding from maybe half the students, of which I am fairly proud.
"Modern Family" is harder. I didn't think about it before I had students watch the first episode, but the lack of laugh-track in "Modern Family" makes it very hard for non-American, non-native English speakers to understand what exactly is supposed to be funny. I had the students watch the first episode for class on Monday and email me with at least two jokes, phrases, references, or words that they didn't understand or that they found particularly amusing. Following are some of the responses that I got:
"What makes me puzzled is that when Haley invites her friend to her home, why Claire is so nervous? Americans have the open mind of the relationship of girls and boys, aren’t they? And are many children mature in America? Manny is just eleven years old but he looks like an adult when he shows his love to the girl?"
"First, what is cream puffs mean when it be used to describe a person. Second, Why did phil mean touch in this TV show."
"Why does Claire say “if Haley never wakes up on a beach in Florida, half-naked,”? Is the beach in Florida special comparing with others? And Why does Phil say “Lily. Isn’t that gonna be hard for her to say?” when Phil know the baby’s name. "
So in answering these questions, I got to explain: how "cream puff" can be used as a pejorative for gay men, how Americans like to make fun of foreigners' accents, and what a stereotypical college Spring Break is. The second was particularly funny because almost all of my students pronounced Phil and feel the same, just like Gloria's Columbian accent in the show. The part about "Lily, isn't that gonna be hard for her to say?" actually was a little lengthy to explain, because it required explaining: A. That Americans stereotypically lump all Asians together and stereotype them, and B. That the stereotypical Asian English accent can't correctly pronounce "l", and therefore C. The joke is that Phil is assuming that the Vietnamese baby, who is not speaking, will still have an "Asian" accent when she grows up.
In addition to these questions, I also got two categories of students who had trouble coming up with responses for the homework. Either they didn't find the material funny at all and so weren't sure when there were any jokes or they watched several seasons of the show and so couldn't remember things from the first episode or alternatively sent me questions about a random episode from a later season. I was not prepared for either of these possibilities.
And now I am off to bed, for tomorrow I am off to Thailand. The Luce Scholars have a mid-year meeting in Thailand, where we will catch up, meet with the leaders of the program (the wonderful Li Ling and David Kim), and discuss how our placement has been so far. We will also enjoy being in Thailand and wander around Bangkok and lounge on the beautiful beaches of Krabi. It's a rough life.
This has been fairly stressful, but I've sought help from the students by asking what they want to learn about America and what components of the English language they want to focus on. One thing that came up when asking my students this was humor. Humor is notoriously difficult to translate and hard to understand across cultures and even though my students all watch a lot of American TV (honestly, I'm pretty sure almost all of them watch more hours than I do), they often have trouble understanding the jokes contained in them. For reference, the most popular shows that people watch here are "The Big Bang Theory," "2 Broke Girls," "Friends," and "Vampire Diaries."
So anyway, to help explain humor and help my students get a better sense of American contemporary society, I've decided to tell a joke at the beginning of each class, and then explain it, and, additionally, have them watch episodes of "Modern Family" for homework. The Joke of the Day has resulted in me telling such gems as "What did the fish say when it ran into the wall? Dam(n)!" and explaining the classes of "A ___ walks into a bar," and "Why did the chicken cross the road?" jokes. After some explanation, these are generally met with a few appreciative chuckles and nodding from maybe half the students, of which I am fairly proud.
"Modern Family" is harder. I didn't think about it before I had students watch the first episode, but the lack of laugh-track in "Modern Family" makes it very hard for non-American, non-native English speakers to understand what exactly is supposed to be funny. I had the students watch the first episode for class on Monday and email me with at least two jokes, phrases, references, or words that they didn't understand or that they found particularly amusing. Following are some of the responses that I got:
"What makes me puzzled is that when Haley invites her friend to her home, why Claire is so nervous? Americans have the open mind of the relationship of girls and boys, aren’t they? And are many children mature in America? Manny is just eleven years old but he looks like an adult when he shows his love to the girl?"
"First, what is cream puffs mean when it be used to describe a person. Second, Why did phil mean touch in this TV show."
"Why does Claire say “if Haley never wakes up on a beach in Florida, half-naked,”? Is the beach in Florida special comparing with others? And Why does Phil say “Lily. Isn’t that gonna be hard for her to say?” when Phil know the baby’s name. "
So in answering these questions, I got to explain: how "cream puff" can be used as a pejorative for gay men, how Americans like to make fun of foreigners' accents, and what a stereotypical college Spring Break is. The second was particularly funny because almost all of my students pronounced Phil and feel the same, just like Gloria's Columbian accent in the show. The part about "Lily, isn't that gonna be hard for her to say?" actually was a little lengthy to explain, because it required explaining: A. That Americans stereotypically lump all Asians together and stereotype them, and B. That the stereotypical Asian English accent can't correctly pronounce "l", and therefore C. The joke is that Phil is assuming that the Vietnamese baby, who is not speaking, will still have an "Asian" accent when she grows up.
In addition to these questions, I also got two categories of students who had trouble coming up with responses for the homework. Either they didn't find the material funny at all and so weren't sure when there were any jokes or they watched several seasons of the show and so couldn't remember things from the first episode or alternatively sent me questions about a random episode from a later season. I was not prepared for either of these possibilities.
And now I am off to bed, for tomorrow I am off to Thailand. The Luce Scholars have a mid-year meeting in Thailand, where we will catch up, meet with the leaders of the program (the wonderful Li Ling and David Kim), and discuss how our placement has been so far. We will also enjoy being in Thailand and wander around Bangkok and lounge on the beautiful beaches of Krabi. It's a rough life.
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