Blending Humour and Animation in English Learning for Students of English Education Programs in Universities

Most pedagogical approaches lay particular stress on inculcating knowledge while ignoring the significance of students’ learning skills, interests, attitudes and confidence. Therefore, most students consider English learning as examination-oriented. Humour and animation can accommodate learning styles and enhance students’ perceptions of the lesson being presented. Unfortunately, the fact is that the use of humour and animation in language teaching classes in our place does not draw enough attention. Thus, the new teaching and learning approach has not been widely applied. This study used both qualitative as well as quantitative methods to collect data. The qualitative methods included class observation, interviews, teaching material selection, analysis and animation video. The quantitative method focused on class project results. Sixty students of the English Education Department of Indraprastha PGRI Jakarta in their third semester 2019 were chosen in this study. The results of the survey clearly show that students’ projects, which were taught utilising humour and animation, achieved better results. The results were exposed to contextualised language through the implementation of fun in animation. It indicates that there are potential benefits involved in the application of this new learning and teaching methodology, that is can enrich students’ vocabularies, lead to an increase in comprehension of the contexts in animation, create new animation styles, and, therefore, more attention should be paid to this issue in the future.