Teaching humours; advantages and disadvantages

So we talked about teaching figurative language and humours.

An interesing comments has been made by Garcia who teaches English to adults. She states that she teaches humours such as Halloween jokes to her students when there is a time available and feels that it is the right moment (meaning, students are probably up for it).

Advantages within teaching humours to her students are;
1. they learn new words.
2. raise the awareness towards the subject e.g. existance of Halloween jokes
3. students feel that they learnt a lot and feel the satisfaction

Disadvantages are;
1. if students are studying towards IELTS of TOEFL (which are the two main English Examinations which are recognised world wide), they are less likely to be tested on these jokes.
2. Because jokes are based on cultural references and wordplay, students may not understand it or find it funny.

I recently observed a class full of Chinese students aged between 40 and 50, learning proverbs. Because they had knowledge of Chinese proverbs, they were able to draw the similarities of their proverbs and English proverbs. The lesson was veery successful as those proverbs made it extremely interesting for both students and teachers to learn.

What do you think? IF you were to learn a new language, would you prefer to learn proverbs, jokes and saying? If so, you do think you should master the use of it? (e.g. understanding the right context and right time to say them) or do you think you only want to understand the meanings so if someone said it, you will understand and laugh?