INCORPORATING 9GAG MEMES TO DEVELOP EFL LEARNERS’ SPEAKING ABILITY AND WILLINGNESS TO COMMUNICATE

This research aimed at examining whether employing 9GAG humorous memes as ELT materials is effective in developing EFL learners’ speaking ability and their willingness to speak English. A group of Indonesian intermediate EFL learners were selected as respondents for this study and a series of pre-test was conducted to indicate their initial speaking ability and willingness to communicate before the incorporation of 9GAG humorous memes. The group then learned and practiced speaking skills using their routine topics but complemented with humorous materials adopted from the 9GAG application. Ten teaching and learning sessions were held and were followed by post-test to measure participants’ learning achievements as to speaking ability and willingness to speak. A SPSS software was used to calculate samples t-test to make comparisons between the pre-test and post-test of group’s test scores. The results indicated that using 9GAG humorous memes resulting in laughter is impactful in creating a relaxed atmosphere for EFL learners during learning sessions. Students' attention, retention, creativity, and critical thinking are also maintained and increased. It is concluded that humorous materials in language classes are effectively applicable in increasing learners’ speaking ability and willingness to communicate.


INTRODUCTION
In teaching language, teachers always prepare creative ways to attract learners' attention in order for them to focus on the lesson given (Farahani & Abdollahi, 2018). Ineffective aspects possessed by teachers might lead to learners' negative attitude, which significantly determines the success or failure of learning activities (Hibatullah & Ardlillah, 2019). Learners' attention is one of the key aspects which is difficult to be attracted and maintained during teaching-learning activities due to the existence of the internet and other entertainment media. Consequently, teachers need to provide contextually related materials, performing relevant association and interpret high-order thinking (Gurtler, 2002), and making them understand the lesson and the learning goal is achieved. In reality, many teachers hope that learners enjoy their time in the class so that they not only study the lesson but also learn the lesson given.
In some cases, people may study something, but they are not learning it. For example, the sentence "He studied Javanese" may mean he took Javanese classes, or maybe he attempted to teach himself through an app, or other platforms providing lessons on Javanese. Nevertheless, during the process, he faced constraint and difficulty and still cannot grasp and understand the language; he still does not know how to speak the language. This happens due to several reasons; one of them lies on its pedagogical approach. In order for the students to learn when they are studying, effective pedagogical measures must be set to make learners interested and motivated. One of the ways to do it is by creating a real-life situation for students which can efficiently assist them in learning language (Farahani & Abdollahi, 2018). Many teachers are unaware of factor that can create that setting. That factor is called humour. Using humour in the classroom is impactful in escalating class' atmosphere into a relaxing, comforting, and tension-reducing setting.
Furthermore, it is not only maintain/increase learners' interest and mood, the teacher image is also humanely maintained (Al-Duleimi & Aziz, 2016;Fata, Komariah, & Irfandy, 2018;Phakiti, 2006;Algafar, 2017;Wagner & Urios-Aparisi, 2011). Unfortunately, teachers are scared of using humour in the class because they believe they may be losing their authority; therefore, it needs to be put away (Azizinezhad & Hashemi, 2011). Stroud (2013) in Hibatullah and Ardlillah (2019) investigated that giving an overdosed joke/humour leads to a lack of seriousness of learning Recently, many researchers concluded that humour could be one of the effective approaches in creating a lively classroom situation (Hibatullah & Ardlillah, 2019;Tunnisa, Mahmud, & Salija, 2019). Therefore, this research is conducted in order to further confirm the effectiveness of humorous materials in transforming the classroom setting, which assists the students in learning English.
Humour is described as the intensity with which an individual produces smiles, laughs, and otherwise displays amusement in a variety of condition (Martin & Lefcourt, 1984). Moreover, Provine (2001, in Azizinezhad & Hashemi, 2011 indicated that "laughter is a form of communication, probably the first one in the human race, which later evolved, with the liberation of voice from walking and breathing, into human language". This can be seen that humour resulting in laughter is not just a not meaningfully cracking voice yet as part of mechanism to maintain a conversation. In the context of education, humour, as part of pedagogical measures used in a language class, can result in a miracle; it is called named laughter. Researchers revealed that the use of humour in language class could help students to be more interested and motivated (Azizinezhad & Hashemi, 2011). Humour, resulting in laughter, can also help less-sociable students to mingle, and include themselves to the group, join class activities and group tasks without feeling scared or stressed. By that, the interaction between all participants in language class is achieved. According to Banks (2014) and Soares (2015), good interactions among class participants (teacher and learners) contribute significantly to the positive environment in the class.
Interaction also means participation which is crucially important in the communicative (speaking) classroom where the emphasis is on real oral communication, group task, and interaction. Humour can be one way to involve students, who generally feel worried and nervous, in class activities to express their thoughts in a foreign language (Provine, 2002). Kristmanson (2000) emphasizes the need to create a friendly atmosphere for language learning. Humour is perhaps one of the most original and universal speech act in human discourse (Askildson, 2005). As a consequence, the use of humour in the context of EFL pedagogy offers significant advantages for language teachers and learners in speaking classes under EFL context. However, in higher education, humour has not been 133-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | DOI: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license fully maximized by the lecturers as a fun learning strategy to support communicative activities in the classroom. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of the integration of 9GAG's humour as teaching materials in the EFL classroom.
Using humour in language class can also be considered as the innovation of learning strategy. A learning strategy should be aimed at creating a theoretical and practical perspective to change behaviour and capacities (Huda, 2013), to support the creation of effectiveness and efficiency of the learning process (Darmansyah, 2012), to achieve teaching goals and to achieve certain goals including specific learning approaches, models, methods and techniques (Sanjaya, 2007). Humour can replicate a real-life situation during learning, and this is crucial to the development of contextual understanding of learners upon the language. Contextual teaching-learning is essentially beneficial because it links learning material with real-world situations, by encouraging students to link their knowledge with its application in their daily lives. 9GAG contents (memes) are mainly voicing the current affairs around the world from politics, sports, economy, social, to education, and romantic issues. Therefore, these memes are considered contextual, which are strategic to be delivered using Contextual Learning Technique (CTL).
Philosophically, the CTL approach refers to the philosophy of constructivism; learning should ideally not only memorize but must construct knowledge in their own minds, because knowledge is inseparable and also reflects applicable skills. Thus, the acquisition of one's experience is obtained from the process of assimilation and accommodation so that the experience is embedded in one's mind (Zulaiha, 2016). S Elliot once said "Humour is also a way of saying serious things". This needs to be maximized in the realm of learning in tertiary institutions to create a pleasant learning atmosphere. According to Sheinowizt as quoted by Darmansyah (2012), "Humour is a funny quality of someone ridiculous and entertaining." According to Darmansyah (2012), there are five benefits of humour in learning, namely: (1) humour as a student's attention grabber; (2) humour helps reduce boredom in learning; (3) humour helps relieve tension in the classroom; (4) humour helps overcome physical and mental fatigue in learning; and (5) humour facilitates communication and interaction.
There are many studies on the effectiveness of using humour in the EFL Classroom, such as research on the IJEE (Indonesian Journal of English Education), 7 (2), 2020

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http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | DOI: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license use of humour by EFL teachers in the class that had been conducted in Indonesia (Tunnisa et al., 2019). They investigated kinds of humour utilized by EFL teachers and its effectiveness in creating an effective learning setting. This research also examined the relationship between EFL learners` perception of their teachers. The results showed six types of humour employed by teachers in EFL classroom, and they were proven to be an effective measure to mediate an effective interaction between teacher and learners of EFL in Indonesia. This finding is also confirmed by Jatiyasa (2019), who examined 85 students' perception towards the use of humour in EFL context. The findings supported the claim that humour is good for the classroom atmosphere and can maintain a smooth relation between teachers and learners. Furthermore, Farahani and Abdollahi (2018) investigated the role of humour to develop Iranian EFL learners' speaking ability and willingness to speak. The subjects were divided into the controlled and experimental group. The analyses of data indicated that humour is believed to be an effective tool to develop speaking ability and willingness to speak by a significant number of 95% and 99%. This research is a breakthrough in the area of humour as part of a pedagogical measure. (2019) conducted qualitative research to investigate students' perception of humour incorporated in English material. They also aimed to observe the engagement of teachers and learners in the EFL classroom. The findings reveal that the majority of learners affirm that humour delivered by the teacher could prevent them from stress during English learning process, assist them to learn and understand the lesson better, and make them more active. Moreover, the humour also develops a better relationship between learners and teacher. The assumption that humour may degrade a teacher's authority is proven to be inaccurate in this research. Students claim that teachers with a sense of humour are friendly and full of energy, and they totally respect them. Azizinezhad and Hashemi (2011) summarized experts' judgement on the impact/s of employing humour and laughter in language class. The paper confirmed that humour and laughter have psychological, pedagogical, and cognitive benefits for learners, their learning process, and teacher-learners relationship. This is mainly because humour and laughter escalate class' atmosphere into a relaxing, comforting, and tension-reducing setting. Listiyaningsih, Rukmini, and Sutopo (2020) conducted a research aiming at analysing students' response toward humorous, fearing, annoying, pitiful, and confusing memes taken from 9GAG apps. This research found out that students as the readers successfully experienced both reading activity, efferent reading and aesthetic reading. It is also clearly identified that humorous memes meet the readers understanding of the message implied. Furthermore, Putri (2008) did research which aimed to analyse memes in the area of receptive skill by using the reception theory. The results shown the acceptance and rejection of the lecturers towards the memes given. Those studies cited above mainly concerned on the teachers and students' response toward humour given in language class. Two studies utilize 9GAG memes to reveal learners' understanding of the level of reading. Therefore, this research aimed at investigating the effectiveness of incorporating humour taken from 9GAG apps to specifically develop EFL learners' speaking ability and their willingness to speak. 9GAG is a social media that contains humorous contents on various issues such as politics, sports, social, music, and others. 9GAG content is written in English, so it is relevant to EFL speaking class in this research. The majority of 9GAG's content, around 70 percent, is memes. A meme is content that requires the same insight between its creators and its readers, an aspect that makes memes universal. It is the universal elements contained in a meme that make it funny. Memes, uploaded by creators on 9GAG, are written in English because English also supports the universal element in these memes. Based on the results of the analysis of Instagram @9GAG account data, the three most prominent types of humour are Universality, Logic, and Analogy. The three types of humour, which are manifested in many memes using English, will certainly be a good stimulus for English learners.

Hibatullah and Ardlillah
Hypothesesthis research is initiated with the hypothesis that incorporating humorous contents taken from 9GAG apps results a significant difference on developing EFL learners' speaking ability and willingness to communicate. This hypothesis is tested by comparing the score (post-test and pre-test) between the two groups statistically. pre-test was also administrated to draw the initial level of willingness to communicate with both groups. This test is administrated using a tool for measuring the interrelationships between L2 Willingness to Communicate and confidence, beliefs, motivation, and context designed by Mystkowska-Wiertelak, andPawlak (2016, in Ayersglassey &MacIntyre, 2019). After these stages of pre-test, the control group (Group 1) received their routine material talking about their personal identity, hobby, appearance, daily routine, and other topic related with English for daily conversation. On the other hand, the experimental group (Group 2), other than receiving those routine topics, they also received supplementary lesson in the form of humorous memes taken from 9GAG. These materials are given through numerous activities such as telling stories, experiences, asking students to tell a joke and other relevant activities. At the end of the tenth session, all participants participated in a test to measure their progress both in terms of speaking ability and their motivation to speak.

METHOD
This research employed quantitative and qualitative approaches. After all the needed data had been collected, they were automatically calculated using SPSS software. The result, descriptive statistics, consisting of group's means, standard deviations, and frequency, were then explained qualitatively. Using t-test, the comparisons between the first and the second group were made to reveal the significance.

Findings
This section presents the researcher's analytical calculation to answer the problem of the research. The calculation is made using SPSS software. The detailed results of the calculation are provided below. The descriptive statistics above shows the distribution of the data. It indicates that the mean score of pretests of Group 1 is 82.67, and the standard deviation is 4.53. The post-test score shows an increase of mean by 86.73.

IJEE (Indonesian Journal of English
Meanwhile, the standard deviation is 3.91. The Test of Normality then follows this calculation to measure the distribution of the data. As observed in Table 2, the distribution of Pre-test score calculated using Kolmogorov-Smirnov is 0.200 > 0.05, which means normal. The distribution of Post-test score shows the same result with 0.200 > 0.05 that means normal. This step is the continued with the Test of Homogeneity of Variance. Based on mean score, the score of homogeneity of Group 1 score is 0.566 which is higher than 0.05. The score indicates that Group 1 is homogenous. The final step in this part is independent t-test to measure the significance of both scores difference.  Table 3 shows the result of independent t-test, and the score is 0.014 < 0.05. It means that the difference between Pre-test and Post-test score of Group 1 is significant (Mean: 82.667 x 86.7333). Group 1 is the group that did not receive supplementary humorous material taken from 9GAG. Nevertheless, based on the calculation of its score, it shows a significant development of speaking ability. The findings implicate that without giving supplementary humorous material, the EFL learners shows significant progress on their speaking ability.

The Comparison between Pre-Test and
Post-test score of Speaking Ability of Group 2 The descriptive statistics above shows the distribution of the data. It indicates that the mean score of pretests of Group 2 is 82.8, and the standard deviation is 4.41. The post-test score shows an increase of mean to 89.67.
Meanwhile, the standard deviation is 2.79. The Test of Normality then follows this calculation to measure the distribution of the data. As observed in Table 5 above, the distribution of Pre-test score calculated using Kolmogorov-Smirnov is 0.060 > 0.05, which means normal. The distribution of Post-test score shows the same result with 0.200 > 0.05 that means normal. This step is then continued with the Test of Homogeneity of Variance. Based on mean score, the score of homogeneity of Group 2 score is 0.281 which is higher than 0.05. The score indicates that Group 2 is homogenous. The final step in this part is independent t test to measure the significance of both scores difference.   Table 6 shows the result of independent t-test, and the score is 0.000 < 0.05. It means that the difference between Pre-test and Post-test score of Group 2 is significant (Mean: 82.8000 x 89.6667). Group 2 is the group that receive supplementary humorous material taken from 9GAG. Based on the calculation of its score, it shows a significant development of speaking ability. The findings suggest that EFL learners who only received routine topics without supplementary humorous memes material taken from 9GAG still show a progress on their speaking ability. Based on the score of the t test, the (sig <0.05) level is considered significant, but later in the comparison, in can be interpreted that there is a significance between the final score of the two groups. The mean scores of Group 2 that received supplementary humorous material show a higher level in speaking ability. Compared to Group 1, the difference between Pre-test and Post-test score on speaking ability of Group 2 is higher.

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The findings indicate that giving supplementary humorous memes taken from 9GAG resulted from a more significant improvement of EFL learners' speaking ability.

The Comparison of Post-test Score of Speaking Ability between Group 1 and Group 2
The comparison is made to see the degree of significance of the post-test score. This is made to answer the question whether giving supplementary humorous material can significantly improve EFL learners speaking ability. The first step made is calculating the normality of the data. As calculated using Kolmogorov-Smirnov, the result is 0.200 > 0.05 which means normal. This step is then continued with the Test of Homogeneity of Variance. Based on mean score, the score of homogeneity of both scores (post-test of group 1 and 2) is 0.275 which is higher than 0.05. Therefore, the distribution of the data is homogenous. The final step in this part is independent t test to measure the significance of both scores difference. The result of independent t-test, the score is 0.025 < 0.05. It means that the difference between Post-test of Group 1 and Group 2 is significant (Mean: 86.7333 x 89.6667). Group 2 received supplementary humorous material taken from 9GAG, meanwhile Group 1 did not. Based on the calculation, it shows a significant development of speaking ability. The findings implicate that without giving supplementary humorous material, the EFL learners shows significant progress on their speaking ability better (gap 2.9337) than by not receiving humorous material. Based on the score of the t-test, the (sig <0.05) level is considered significant, but when the achieved score of Group 1, and Group 2 are compared, in can be interpreted that there is a significance between the final score of the two groups. Because according to the mean scores of Group 2 that received supplementary humorous material show a higher score in speaking ability. Compared to Group 1, the difference between Pre-test and Post-test score on speaking ability of Group 2 is higher. The findings indicate that giving supplementary humorous memes taken from 9GAG resulted in a more significant improvement of EFL learners' speaking ability.

The Willingness to Communicate score of Group 1 and Group 2
This part is made to calculate the impact of giving supplementary humorous material taken from 9GAG can improve the motivation to communicate of EFL learners.  Table 7 shows the distribution of the data. The scale of the willingness to communicate score is 1-5. It indicates that the mean score of Group 1 is 2.93, and the standard deviation is 1.38. Meanwhile, the mean score of Group 2 is 3.86, and the standard deviation is 0.99. The Test of Normality then follows this calculation to measure the distribution of the data. The test of normality indicates that the distribution score of Group 1 is normal by 0.079 > 0.05. Meanwhile, the distribution of Group 2 score is not normal because it is smaller than 0.05 (0.025 < 0.05). Since the distribution of the data is not normal, the calculation is then continued by using NPar Test: Mann-Whitney to measure the significant difference of both data. .056 Table 9 indicates that score is 0.050 = 0.050. It shows that Group 2 shows significant improvement of participants' willingness to communicate. Therefore, it can be derived that giving supplementary humorous material taken from 9GAG can improve ELF learners' willingness to communicate in the class.

Discussion
Regarding to the elaboration in the findings section, the researcher concluded handful important findings. The results of this study are comparable with the results of the previous studies reviewed in this study. This comparison necessarily made to provide insight of incorporating specific genre of universal humour to develop ELF learners' speaking ability and willingness to communicate. Previous studies generally examined the effect of humour on learning a second/foreign language, the students' perception of humour, and types of humour implemented by teachers in EFL classroom. There is only one research that measures the willingness to communicate. Meanwhile, this research employed a specific type of humour taken from a single source named 9GAG.
Compared to Tunnisa, et al. (2019) and Jatiyasa (2019), this research confirmed the findings. Their research affirmed that utilizing humour in EFL classroom is effective to create an effective learning setting, which is good for the classroom atmosphere, and smooth relation between teachers and learners. This type of setting can lead to achievement of learning goal, the learners' improvement. Meanwhile, the result of this present research shows a more significant development of speaking ability and willingness to communicate of EFL learners compared to the group that did not receive a supplementary humorous material, which is an improvement. This significance improvement implicates that humour taken from 9GAG can also lead to an effective learning setting. Therefore, the results of this research  (2019) pointed that the majority of learners affirm that humour delivered by the teacher could prevent them from stress during English learning process, assist them to learn and understand the lesson better, and make them more active. Moreover, the humour also develops a better relationship between learners and the teacher. Regarding the results of Hibatullah and Ardlillah (2019)'s research, it can be noted that the findings of this research add new insights. This research took into consideration of humorous material to improve L2 students` speaking ability and willingness to communicate. Therefore, these two studies can fulfil the complementary role. Farahani and Abdollahi (2018) investigated the role of humour to develop Iranian EFL learners' speaking ability and willingness to speak. This current research shares the same objectives and methods though this research employed 9GAG apps as the source of the material. Based on the findings, this research indicates the same result that giving humorous material to EFL learners can improve both speaking ability and willingness to communicate significantly. Based on the finding on both variables, Farahani and Abdollahi's (2018) research is comparable with this present research.
In the Indonesian context, there were not previous studies that discuss the incorporation of 9GAG humorous meme in relation to the development of English-speaking skills and learners' willingness to communicate. Two studies discussing 9GAG memes conducted by Listiyaningsih et al. (2020) and Putri (2008) were mainly focused on reading skill by analysing the students' response regarding their understanding on the implied meaning of memes given. This research provided a new finding to fill the existing gap; that by giving supplementary humorous material to EFL learners, both English-speaking skill and willingness to communicate is developed higher than those who did not receive supplementary humorous material.
All of the findings reveal that humorous material is an effective pedagogical resource since when supplementary humorous material is given to EFL learners, it results in a higher improvement in term of speaking ability and willingness to communicate of EFL learners compared to those who did not receive it. These findings confirmed Azizinezhad and Hashemi's (2011)  of humour as pedagogical tools for language learners. Moreover, the findings and discussion answer the hypothesis stated at the introduction of the research that incorporating humorous contents taken from 9GAG apps results in a significant difference on developing EFL learners' speaking ability and willingness to communicate.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
This research revealed the effectiveness of incorporating humorous material into EFL classroom to develop learners' speaking ability and willingness to speak. Based on the statistical calculation provided in this research, it is revealed that there is a significant difference in the level of certainty between the EFL learners' scores in Group 2 which incorporated humorous content taken from 9GAG apps in EFL classrooms and the EFL learners in Group 1 which did not incorporate humorous content taken from 9GAG apps in terms of speaking ability. The findings discussed in this study can provide some implications for policy makers, English teachers, and EFL learners.