At what point in language acquisition do students start to misunderstand jokes due to language proficiency?

Students typically begin to misunderstand jokes during the intermediate fluency stage of language acquisition. At this point, learners have developed a significantly larger vocabulary and grasp basic grammar structures, allowing them to understand more complex language inputs. However, the nuances of language, such as humor, require a deeper level of cultural and contextual understanding that may not be fully developed yet.

While learners in earlier stages, like pre-production or early production, are still refining basic vocabulary and simple sentence structures, and those in the speech emergence stage are just beginning to produce more complete sentences, it is during intermediate fluency that they encounter the subtleties and idiomatic expressions associated with jokes. Their language proficiency allows them to engage in conversations, but they may still grapple with double meanings, puns, and cultural references inherent in humor. Thus, misunderstandings of jokes often become evident at this critical stage of language development.