Tài liệu Phát triển khả năng hiểu tính hài hước trong các truyện cười tiếng anh của sinh viên ngành hướng dẫn du lịch qua tài liệu nguyên gốc.

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ________________________ TRẦN THỊ ÁI HOA DEVELOPING TOUR GUIDE STUDENTS’ ABILITY TO MAKE SENSE OF HUMOUR IN ENGLISH JOKES THROUGH AUTHENTIC MATERIALS Phát triển khả năng hiểu tính hài hước trong các truyện cười tiếng Anh của sinh viên ngành Hướng dẫn du lịch qua tài liệu nguyên gốc A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 62140111 Supervisors: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyễn Phương Nga Dr. Tô Thị Thu Hương HÀ NỘI-2018 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I, the undersigned, certify my authority of the dissertation entitled ―Developing Tour Guide Students‘ Ability To Make Sense Of Humour In English Jokes through Authentic Materials‖ in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy. Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‘s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the dissertation. TRAN THI AI HOA i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS On the very outset of this report, I would like to extend my sincere and heartfelt obligation towards all the personages who have helped me in this endeavour. Without their active guidance, help, cooperation and encouragement, I would not have made headway in the project. First of all, I wish to thank my supervisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Phuong Nga for her tolerant perseverance with me in the world of combustion research. It was only due to her initial valuable guidance and accurate judgement that I received to be able to drive my research work in a respectable manner.I am eternally grateful to my associate supervisor, Dr. To Thi Thu Huong for her extensive expertise and her generosity in steering me through the research. She has always been in a cheerful, enthusiastic and ever-friendly nature that inspires me to administer and complete this research. They both have made my research possible by providing me with precious lessons and giving me the chance to gain access to every stage of research. My warm and sincere thanks are also merits to Prof. Nguyen Hoa, Dr. Huynh Anh Tuan, Assoc. Prof. Le Van Canh, Assoc. Prof. Pham Thi Hong Nhung, Assoc. Prof. Le Hung Tien, Dr. Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa and Dr. Dương Thi Thu Mai for their valuable suggestions and assistance. I would like to acknowledge the contribution of all the tour guides, foreign tourists, teachers and tour guide undergraduates who participated in the survey in Khanh Hoa Travel Agency and at college and university in Nha Trang City. I am thankful for the teachers and tour guide undergraduates at Nha Trang College of Art, Culture and Tourism (now renamed Khanh Hoa University) for verifying the proposed authentic materials. Particularly, I am grateful for the 20 students at Khanh Hoa University who were so enthusiastically participatory and hard-working in the intervention course. Last but not least, I am deeply and forever indebted to my beloved family, specifically my husband for their unconditional love, and my supportive foreign and Vietnamese friends, especially my best friends in Nha Trang City for their precious friendship and strong faith in me through all the fluctuations of my study. ii ABSTRACT Using humour in tourism by telling English jokes to English-speaking tourists in guided trips is a much needed capacity for Vietnamese tour guides. Vietnamese EFL tour guide students, therefore, need to be trained and qualified with this capacity for their tour guiding job. This study is an attempt to help develop Vietnamese EFL tour guide students‘ ability to make sense of humour in English jokes (defined as being able to understand and retell jokes in English to appropriate audience in appropriate situations) through the use of authentic materials to enable them to appropriately use humour in their tourguiding with particular reference to English-speaking tourists. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was used for collection of both quantitative and qualitative data to enhance validity and reliability of the findings. The research was designed with two phases: one for authentic materials selection and related competency-based experimental intervention course design and the other for the implementation of the course to help develop tour guide students‘ ability to make sense of humour. After 8-week extra-curricular intervention, post test results presented a significant rise compared with pre-test. Nearly all the students were able to comprehend the humour in the introduced English jokes and two-thirds of the students could retell suitable English jokes to appropriate audience in appropriate situations. The findings have offered a considerable contribution not only to the field of language education but also to the one of humour research. Thus, it can be stated that EFL tour guide students could make sense of humour in English jokes when properly trained and humour can be taught, a confirmation of the finding in Pham‘s (2014) study. The contribution of the study is that it helps to provide the tour guiding community in Viet Nam with a high-quality workforce to promote the tourism industry development in Nha Trang City, Khanh Hoa Province. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ............................................................................ i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .....................................................................................x LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................... xi LIST OF FIGURES.................................................................................................. xii INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................1 1. Rationale .................................................................................................................1 2. Significance of the study .........................................................................................5 3. Aims and objectives of the study ............................................................................6 4. Scope of the study ...................................................................................................7 5. Research context .....................................................................................................8 6. Research questions ..................................................................................................9 7. Key terms and definitions .......................................................................................9 7.1. Humour ............................................................................................................9 7.2. Sense of humour ..............................................................................................9 7.3. Cognitive-perceptual processes in humour ....................................................10 7.4. Humour comprehension, humour appreciation and humour competence .....10 7.5. (Canned) jokes ...............................................................................................10 7.6. Pragmatic competence ...................................................................................10 7.7. ―Make sense of‖ and ―Tour guide students‘ ability to make sense of humour in English jokes‖ ...................................................................................................11 7.8. Authentic materials, authentic texts, authentic English jokes .......................11 8. Study componential schema ..................................................................................11 9. Structure of the study ............................................................................................12 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................................13 1.1. Humour and its importance in tourism ..............................................................13 iv 1.1.1. Sense of humour .........................................................................................13 1.1.2. Classification of humour .............................................................................14 1.1.3. Theories of humour .....................................................................................18 1.1.4. Humour research and the field of the present study ...................................20 1.1.5. Humour in English jokes ............................................................................23 1.1.5.1. English (canned) jokes ........................................................................23 1.1.5.2. Integration of the three traditional theories of humour in a joke ........24 1.1.5.3. The ambiguity in jokes ........................................................................27 1.1.5.4. Pragmatic perspective of jokes ............................................................31 1.1.5.5. Cultural elements in English jokes ......................................................34 1.1.6. ELT tour guide students‘s ability to make sense of humour in English jokes ...35 1.1.6.1. Humour competence ............................................................................36 1.1.6.2. Pragmatic competence and its interface with humour competence ....40 1.1.6.3. Obstacles for EFL tour guide students to make sense of humour in English jokes ..................................................................................................................44 1.1.6.4. Conditions for ELT TG students to interpret humour in English jokes .....47 1.2. Authentic materials for developing EFL students‘ ability to make sense of humour in English jokes............................................................................................48 1.2.1. Authenticity and authentic materials ..........................................................48 1.2.2.Competency-based approach to syllabus/ materials design/ selection ........49 1.2.2.1. An overview of approaches to syllabus/ materials design/ selection ..49 1.2.2.2. Competency-based language teaching ................................................51 1.2.2.3. Process of establishing competencies to guide the selection of AM and the design of relating course .............................................................................54 1.2.3. Criteria for selection of authentic materials................................................56 1.2.4. Cognitive theory to guide the teaching and learning process .....................58 1.2.4.1. Questions and tasks .............................................................................59 1.2.4.2. Using scripts and learners‘ experience ................................................60 1.2.4.3. Simulation (Role play) ........................................................................61 v 1.2.5. Syllabus design and materials evaluation ...................................................61 1.3. Review of previous studies on humour competence ..........................................63 1.3.1. Review of previous studies in other countries ............................................63 1.3.2. Review of previous studies in Viet Nam ....................................................68 1.4. Chapter conclusion and theoretical framework .................................................69 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY ............................................................................71 2.1. Research design ..................................................................................................71 2.2. Phase 1 –Materials selection ..............................................................................77 2.2.1. Stage 1 - Needs analysis .............................................................................77 2.2.1.1. Participants and sampling ....................................................................77 2.2.1.2. Data collection instruments .................................................................80 2.2.1.3. Data collection procedure ....................................................................83 2.2.1.4. Data analysis ........................................................................................84 2.2.2. Stage 2 - Materials verification and piloting ..............................................85 2.2.2.1. Participants and sampling ....................................................................85 2.2.2.2. Data collection instruments .................................................................86 2.2.2.3. Data collection procedure ....................................................................87 2.2.2.4. Data analysis ........................................................................................87 2.3. Phase 2: Intervention ..........................................................................................88 2.3.1. Participants and sampling ...........................................................................88 2.3.2. Data collection instruments ........................................................................89 2.3.2.1. Tests .....................................................................................................89 2.3.2.2. Interview ..............................................................................................92 2.3.3. Data collection procedure ...........................................................................93 2.3.4. Data analysis ...............................................................................................93 2.4. Significance of quantitative data and qualitative data integration .....................94 2.4.1. Validity .......................................................................................................95 2.4.2. Reliability....................................................................................................95 2.5. Chapter conclusion .............................................................................................96 vi CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS......................................................97 3.1. Phase 1 –Materials selection ..............................................................................97 3.1.1. Stage 1- Results from needs analysis ..........................................................97 3.1.1.1. Results from survey questionnaire ......................................................97 3.1.1.2. Results from interviews .....................................................................104 3.1.1.3. Results from observation data ...........................................................108 3.1.2. Summary of findings from Phase 1, Stage 1 ............................................109 3.1.2.1. Target situation and learning needs ...................................................110 3.1.2.2. Criteria and strategies for authentic materials selection and teaching......112 3.1.2.3. Teaching methodology guideline for the proposed authentic materials ..113 3.1.3. The Proposed Authentic Materials ...........................................................115 3.1.4. Materials verification and piloting ............................................................119 3.1.4.1. Result from questionnaires (Teachers‘ assessment) ..........................119 3.1.4.2. Results from the interview (Students‘ opinions) ...............................119 3.1.4.3. Adjustments after the materials verification and piloting .................121 3.2. Phase two – Intervention ..................................................................................122 3.2.1. Results of pre-post tests of humour interpretation in English jokes .........122 3.2.1.1. Description of the process of learning ...............................................122 3.2.1.2. Pre-post test data results ....................................................................124 3.2.1.3. Interview data ....................................................................................130 3.2.2. Pre-post test about difficulties ..................................................................135 3.2.3. Results of test of performing jokes ...........................................................140 3.3. Discussions .......................................................................................................141 3.3.1. Application of the authentic materials: benefits and challenges ..............141 3.3.2. Application of humour competence model...............................................144 3.3.3. Role of pragmatic competence .................................................................146 3.3.4. Role of teaching methods to the proposed authentic materials ................148 3.4. Chapter conclusion ...........................................................................................150 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................151 vii 1. Recapitulation .....................................................................................................151 1.1. Answer to sub-question 1 .................................................................................151 1.2. Answer to sub-question 2 .................................................................................152 1.3. Answer to sub-question 3 .................................................................................152 2. Implications .........................................................................................................155 2.1. Methodological implications ............................................................................155 2.2. Theoretical implication ....................................................................................155 2.3. Pedagogical implication ...................................................................................156 3. Limitations ..........................................................................................................158 4. Suggestions for further studies ............................................................................158 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................159 APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TOUR GUIDES ...................... I APPENDIX 2: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TOURISTS ........................... VI APPENDIX 3: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TEACHERS ....................... VIII APPENDIX 4: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS ........................... X APPENDIX 5: A. INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TOUR GUIDES ............... XIV APPENDIX 6: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TEACHERS OF ENGLISH FOR TOURISM .............................................................................................................. XV APPENDIX 7: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TOUR GUIDE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS .................................................................... XVII APPENDIX 8: PRETEST FOR 20 TOUR GUIDE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS ........................................................................................................ XVIII APPENDIX 9: POST TEST FOR 20 TOUR GUIDE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS .......................................................................................................... XXI APPENDIX 10: THE INTERPRETATION OF HUMOUR IN ENGLISH JOKES ................................................................................................................XXIV APPENDIX 11: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR 10 TOUR GUIDE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS ................................................................. XXVII viii APPENDIX 12: EVALUATION CHECKLIST FOR 20 TOUR GUIDE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS ................................................................ XXVIII APPENDIX 13: RESULTS OF QUESTIONNAIRES ON NEEDS ANALYSIS ... XXX APPENDIX 14:RESULTS OF OBSERVATIONS ON BUS TOURIST TRIPSXXXVIII APPENDIX 15: RESULTS OF QUESTIONNAIRE ON MATERIALS VERIFICATION ...................................................................................................XLII APPENDIX 16: T-TEST OUTPUT .................................................................... XLIII APPENDIX 17: RESULTS OF JOKE-TELLING CONTEST .......................... XLIV APPENDIX 18: PARTICIPANTS‘ BRIEF PROFILE ........................................ XLV APPENDIX 19: STUDENTS' BOOK ............................................................. XLVIII APPENDIX 20: TEACHER'S BOOK .......................................................... LXXXIX APPENDIX 21: SUPPLEMENTARY AUTHENTIC MATERIALS ............. CXVIII APPENDIX 22: TEACHING METHODOLOGY GUIDLINE FOR THE SUGGESTED MATERIALS.............................................................................. CXLI APPENDIX 23: LESSON PLAN .................................................................... CXLVI ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AM Authentic materials EFL English as a foreign language ESL English as a second language EG Experimental group FL Foreign language FT Foreign tourist GTVH General Theory of Verbal Humour HA Humour appreciation HC Humour competence L1 First language L2 Second language MoET Ministry of Education and Training MoCST Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism MSOH Making sense of hunour MV Materials verification NA Needs analysis NNS Non-native speaker NS Native speaker NVB Non-verbal humour PC Pragmatic competence S Student/ Subject SOH Sense of humour SSTH Semantic Script Theory of Humour TEFT Teacher of English for tourism TG Tour guide TGS Tour guide student TGU Tour guide undergraduate VB Verbal humour x LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1. Classification of humour ..........................................................................17 Table 1.2: Ambiguities of English jokes ...................................................................28 Table 1.3: Humour competence and the interaction of three systems ......................39 Table 1.4: Interface of humour competence and pragmatic competence .................42 Table 1.5: EFL TG Sts‘ ability to make sense of humour in English jokes .............43 Table 1.6. Descriptions of steps in competency-based materials (Sujana, 2005) .....54 Table 1.7.Equality of the Target Situation Needs and Learning Needs....................55 Table 1.8: Criteria for selection of authentic materials .............................................58 Table 1.9. Summary of the previous studies on humour competence ......................63 Table 2.1. Summary of information and data needed for research questions ...........76 Table 2.2: Participant groups ....................................................................................78 Table 2.3. Description of joke test ............................................................................91 Table 3.1: Categories of TGUs‘ difficulties in interpreting humour in English jokes ...107 Table 3.2: Needs of learning humour ......................................................................110 Table 3.3: Criteria for selecting the authentic materials .........................................112 Table 3.4: Strategies for selecting the authentic materials......................................112 Table 3.5: Task procedure .......................................................................................114 Table 3.6: The proposed syllabus............................................................................116 Table 3.7: Summary of the students‘ opinions .......................................................120 Table 3.8: Percentage of the scores of the subjects.................................................127 Table 3.9: Results of the post test ...........................................................................130 Table 3.10: Results of the interviews ......................................................................133 Table 3.11. Achievement of competencies .............................................................134 xi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Research Componential Schema ...............................................................12 Figure 1.1. Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary research of humour ..................21 Figure 1.2. Research field of the present study .........................................................23 Figure 1.3: The integration of the three humour theories .........................................25 Figure 1.4. Incongruity-resolution model (Suls, 1972) .............................................26 Figure 1.5. Linguistic humour structure spectrum(Obrst, 2012) ..............................27 Figure 1.6. Non-bona fide communication in verbal humour ..................................33 Figure 1.7.a. Hay‘s scalar implicature of unqualified humour support. ...................37 Figure 1.7. b. Hay‘s scalar implicature of unqualified humour support. ..................38 Figure 1.8. Theoretical framework for developing tour guide students‘ ability to make sense of humour in English jokes ....................................................................70 Figure 2.1. Explanatory Sequential Design (Creswell, 2011) ..................................72 Figure 2.2: Visual research design ............................................................................73 Figure 2.3. Data collection procedure of the study ...................................................74 Figure 3.1.Tour guide undergraduates' difficulties in telling jokes ..........................98 Figure 3.2. Tour guides' difficulties in telling jokes .................................................99 Figure 3.3. Agreement on the need to learn and teach jokes ..................................101 Figure 3.4. Tourists' favourite types of jokes ..........................................................102 Figure 3.5. Tourists' favourite topics of jokes .........................................................103 Figure 3.6. Appropriate time and place for jokes ...................................................104 Figure 3.7: Merging findings for authentic materials collection ............................109 Figure 3.8. Illustrating the mean of each joke in T1 and T2 ...................................126 Figure 3.9. Statistically Significant Difference between T1 and T2 .......................126 Figure 3.10. Difficulty in identifying the ambiguities ............................................135 Figure 3.11. Difficulty in finding meaning of words ..............................................136 Figure 3.12. Difficulty in clarifying joke structure .................................................137 Figure 3.13. Difficulty in word pronunciation ........................................................137 Figure 3.14. Length of jokes causes difficulty for comprehension .........................138 xii Figure 3.15. Difficulty in being aware of culture ...................................................139 Figure 3.16. Difficulty in defining the joke context ...............................................139 Figure 3.17. The fun degree of the TGU students‘ performance ............................140 Figure 3.18. The quality degree of the TGU students‘ performance ......................140 xiii INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Being able to make sense of humour in any jokes at any communicative events keeps one feeling joyful. Reading or hearing a joke and laughing when comprehending and interpreting not only draws one out of the state of being stressful but also establishes or restores a positive emotional climate and a sense of connection among people, making them take pleasure in the company of others. As Provine (2000) says that laughter is not primary about humour, but about social relationships and McGhee (2002) stresses the importance of humour using his own words in an interesting way that laughter is the shortest distance between two people. Also, Moran et al (2014) found out people who have a good sense of humour are perceived to have more socially-desirable traits than those with less of a sense of humour. Funny people may make a good impression on others by reducing the social distance during interactions perhaps conveying greater social warmth, individuals who have a sense of humour may also gain health benefits, with humour acting as an important mechanism for life's tribulations, decreasing stress and improving performance in the workplace. The benefits of humour in the workplace are that a happy work environment will make employees to be more loyal and productive. For instance, tactful jokes may create healthy working environment increasing people‘s enjoymen of work. The turnover may increase as employees feel content and loyal to the company. And the cost associated with illness may decrease as people experience the positive physiological and psychological effects of laughter (Pham, 2014). This is true with some previous studies that people who have fun on the job are more creative, more productive, better decision-makers, and get along better with co-workers. Likewise, in the field of tourism, humour is necessary, especially in the job of tour guides where humour is essentially delivered and appreciated, the relationship is accordingly improved and there comes a nice trip. Actually, one of the most 1 common rhetorical devices for successful tour guides during their practice is to use humour (Meged, 2010). Tour guides can use jokes in communication with tourists and run a successful tour: Tourists laugh or feel amused and have a good trip as a result. As Howard, Twitches and Smith (2001: 34) confirm, "humour was also used as a means to ―wake-up‖ people, to change the pace of the tour, to renew people's interest in their surroundings and to ensure an enjoyable experience". Woodside et al. (2007) reminds that, during the travel phase, the tourists may experience informal humour when sharing a joke with their travelling companions, with the tourism employees or the local people they encounter because it is important to use humour to create a friendly and cooperative atmosphere among tour participants: tourists and tour guides. The kind of humour for tourism is named informal humour which is "the spontaneous creation and sharing of jokes during the travel situations" (Pearce & Pabel, 2015: 55). Tour guides open humorous conversations with tourists helping them to become directly involved in producing and co-creating their own humour based on social interactions (Anderson, 2007; Edersor, 2001), cope with a range of stressful, awkward or frustrating travel situations (Frew, 2006a) and more specifically, gain control of a situation by making it appear less threatening, difficult or embarrassing (Solomon, 1996). In reality, there are many cases for the effectiveness of using humour in tour guiding practice. Meged (2010) observed indigenous tour guides at work on tour guiding capacity in Australia and concluded thathumour enhanced group cohesion. The guide had a very interactive style and direct, racy humour, which worked well with the tourist group on the day. On a tourist website (2017), a foreign tourist expressed his pleasure in an eight-hour tour which was filled with laughter because the Vietnamese tour guide ambushed them with jokes in a stop in Ho Chi Minh City. Likewise, in NhaTrang in an observation of a city tour in the preliminary study of this study, experienced tour guides told interesting jokes that made foreign tourists happy and their guided tours were very successful. Travel agents in Khanh Hoa Travel Company agreed that it was necessary 2 to use humour during the trips because humour-oriented trips made more profits than the ones without humour. However, Vietnamese tour guides (TG) could use little humour when communicating with foreign tourists (FT) who speak English during their trips. In an interview of scanning the humour use with a TG who had six-year of tour guiding experience, it was found that humour-oriented tours were essential but Vietnamese TGs neglected them as they were not competent at telling jokes in English and had little knowledge about humour and that their most interest was tourists‘ safety during the trip. That was because they did not have any lessons of making sense ofhumour or telling jokes in English at college or university. The humour they made in their trip came from their own experience and creation and the jokes they told were collected from the internet by themselves. Reality shows that college English language programs for tour guides have mostly focused on improving the quality of training with good curriculum, syllabus and materials of English and American cultures, tourism geography, cross culture and English language skills. Moreover, most students at provincial colleges are not much competent at English or self-confident to communicate with foreign tourists in English since they do not have opportunity to contact with foreigners and they are quite timid. Actually, it is not usually easy for Vietnamese learners of English as their foreign language (EFL) to appreciate English humour let alone producing it because they are not to be absolutely competent at humour and humour mechanism (Raskin, 1985, Attardo, 1994; Ritchie, 2004). As being seen, when a native speaker reads or hears a joke in their language, he/she unconsciously and effortlessly makes the judgments (Freud, 1905) about the appropriacy of the humour they use, which means they naturally mention the formation of the surprise element or the rule or the context of the joke but for the issue that they quickly or slowly understand it. Foreign language (EFL) learners, on the contrary, must learn how to understand the joke in different social contexts in which the addressers are from different cultures. Moreover, while native speakers (NS) within their own native context usually have no problems 3 discerning whether or not a remark is to be taken humorously, non-native speakers (NNS) find it much more difficult to recognize such a remark or sometimes they fail to notice (Banitz, 2005). Thus they have to achieve competence involving socioculture (Hymes, 1972), knowledge of textual conventions (Haliday and Hassan, 1976), conventional rules (Van Dijk, 1977), and language usage (Widdowson, 1978). Also, in order to understand the English speaking joke tellers, an EFL learner has to be equipped with such knowledge to interpret EFL humorous utterances. That means he/she has to be taught about EFL humour and has lessons to practice it. Nevertheless, humour is not a rarity in the field of tourism for EFL learners in Viet Nam‘s education and policies. There have been changes in the teaching methods of English and in the English syllabus and textbooks used in colleges and universities‘ curricula. Firstly, the application of the Communicative Language Teaching approach and the learner-centered approach has opened a new perspective for teaching English, supplying learners with pleasure. Secondly, this can be seen through the decisions of the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) that the communicative approach has been introduced to many English language classrooms and any syllabuses and curriculum at any schools, colleges and university where a large number of people are trained for the country‘s work force (MoET, 2010; Pham, 2014). Specifically, according to the Curriculum Guidelines for English Training in Tourism Vocational Training in Viet Nam (2009: 9) the English proficiency for Tour Guideis required from low standard at 625 to high standard at 700 points which is equivalent to the level between B1 and B2 of the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference, 2011) and says that at C1 learners ―can use language flexibly and effectively, including emotional, allusive and joking usage.‖ Moreover, professional regulations of English levels for international tour guides (MoCST, 2009) decide that tour guides are supposed to be able to tellfunny stories or quizzes for foreign tourists in the long journey. Thus, this study has been carried out to meet such requirements and help tour guide students be well-prepared for their future job. 4 One last but not least to pave the way for the present study is that two studies concluding humour can be taught and developed for EFL learners and humour is closely related with tourism. Pham (2014) has a systematic investigation on the use of humour in the EFL classroom at universities in the context of Viet Nam. His findings reveal that humour can be trained and integrated in language syllabi althrough there needs to be consideration on how to apply a scientific and systematic method. In parallel, Fabel (2014) has comprehensive examinations of humour in the field of tourism in Australia. Fabel (2014) explored the multifaceted construct of humour in a naturalistic way and among multiple tourism audience. Humour plays important role in creating enjoyable and engaging tourism experiences. Thus, for the above justifiable reasons, the present study has been carried out to help tour guide students have chance of access to humour and well-prepared for their future job. 2. Significance of the study This study is significant in many aspects as it endeavours to make following contributions. (1) As a contribution to the EFL teaching and learning methodologies, this study discovers the extent to which authentic materials (AM) can help develop TG students‘ ability to make sense of humour in English jokes in the light of the theories of humour, pragmatic competence (PC) and humour competence (HC). (2) The findings of this study contribute to the process of promoting a workforce of professional tour guides for Khanh Hoa province who not only have a good sense of L2 humour but also can use it in communication via English with foreign tourists visiting the province. (3) This study brings benefits to EFL students in improving their communicative competence by raising their awareness of the importance of understanding English jokes and providing them with strategies and methods to enhance their ability to interpret humour in English jokes. 5 (4) The results of the study are beneficial to English language instructors in introducing English jokes into their English language classroom, providing them with methods of integrating teaching humour in English jokes into other syllabi such as cross-culture, designing authenticity into the teaching materials and adapting authentic materials to suit their students‘ needs in making sense of English humor. This is a new contribution of the present study as an evidence to confirm the fact that humour can be trained. (5) Personally, the study has enriched the researcher profoundly in terms of humour competence such that she has gradually developed into a more cheerful personality. Her knowledge of humour theories has enabled her to perceive the humorous subtleties not only in the English language but also in the Vietnamese language, her mother tongue. This, in turns, grows her love of the two languages intensively. 3. Aims and objectives of the study The overall goal of the study is to help improve Vietnamese student‘s ability to make sense of humor in English jokes through the use of authentic English materials. The study elicits aims and objectives. Aims (1) To develop the students‘ ability to make sense of humour in English jokes. (2) To explore the extent to which the students' ability to understand, interpret the humour and recite authentic English jokes for use in subsequent future jobs as international tour guides. Objectives (1) To attain the opinions of tour guides, tour guide students, teachers and tourists about needs of learning humour in English jokes via authentic materials. (2) To grasp criteria and strategies for selecting and using the authentic materials appropriate for the experimental course on making sense of humour in English jokes as an intervention. 6