The effect of children's stories with humorous elements on children's fourth grade students' reading motivation and attitude

The purpose of this study is to identify the effect of humorous stories for children on the reading motivation and attitude of fourth-grade primary school students. The research was designed on the basis of the sequential transformative design model, which is one of the mixed research approaches in which qualitative data sets are used as a step toward quantitative data. Children's stories included in the research were analyzed by three readers according to Theories of Humor and Humor Creation Methods and analyzed in terms of humorous elements in the qualitative dimension of the research. The humorous stories analyzed to support the quantitative data were employed in the experimental application process. A quasi-experimental design with a pretest-posttest comparison group was employed in the quantitative dimension of the research. The research was conducted in a primary school in Mersin province's Erdemli district during the second term of the 2020-2021 academic year. The study which was conducted with a total of 36 fourth-grade students (18 in experimental group and 18 in comparison group), lasted eight weeks. The researcher read humorous stories to the students in the experimental group and non-humorous stories to the students in the comparison group within the scope of the research. The data were collected by using the "Story Evaluation Form" in the qualitative dimension of the research; and by using the "Reading Motivation Scale" and the "Attitude towards Reading Scale" to determine the students' motivation and attitudes toward reading in the quantitative dimension of research. The readers descriptively analyzed the humor elements in the humorous stories in the qualitative analysis section, taking into account the theoretical underpinning. The pretest and posttest scores of the experimental and comparison groups before the experimental procedure were analyzed using the Mann Whitney U Test, one of the non-parametric tests, in the quantitative analysis section. According to the findings of the qualitative analysis from data, humorous stories were thoroughly examined by Theories of Humor and Humor Creation Techniques, and numerous humor elements were identified. It was found that the authors of children's stories utilized all three theories of superiority, incompatibility, and relaxation, however it was concluded that the Theories of Superiority and Incompatibility were used more frequently than the Theory of Relaxation. It was found that the techniques, such as humorous elements, caustic remark, exaggerated words and narratives, and drawing analogy are so much included in the stories. According to the findings of the quantitative analysis from data, the pretest-posttest scores of the experimental group and comparison group of the research were compared; and while it was found a statistically significant difference in the reading motivations of the students with the application of humorous story reading, found no difference in their attitudes toward reading. Keywords: Humor, Theories of Humor, Methods of Creating Humor, Reading Motivation, Reading Attitude