Teaching irony in the Spanish/L2 classroom

Abstract

This article presents an empirical study on the implementation in the Spanish/L2 classroom of a cognitive-based pedagogical material to teach irony building from previous research on irony detection in Spanish and English tweets (Author 1, 2019, in press). Participants were 87 intermediate and 82 advanced students from a North American university. Data were collected during a 75-minute classroom session following a pretest/posttest design to measure irony production and identification. A linguistic background and language use questionnaire was also administered prior to instruction. Quantitative data derived from the irony recognition tests were analysed through a scoring system. Mixed data from the irony production tests were codified to pinpoint learners’ ways of expressing irony using an analysis scheme based on Ruiz de Mendoza’s (2017) twofold category of irony. The results revealed a significant improvement after the intervention for students from the two proficiency levels. Advanced students were significantly better in the production task; however, no significant difference was found between the two groups in the irony recognition tasks. Our findings outline the impact and importance of explicitly teaching irony –a rather neglected aspect heretofore– already at lower levels to avoid misunderstandings in the L2 and enhance learners’ intercultural awareness and communicative competence.