THE APPROPIACY OF HUMOUR IN THE ELT CLASSROOM

By Joshua Troy Newton and Ramaize Atique

Age

Gender

Years of teaching experience

WHAT IS HUMOUR? Something funny. A situation that makes someone smile,

laugh or think to themselves 'ha'. Ability to amuse people by one's spoken

words or by one's actions. Banter. Makes you laugh or cry. Dry. Words / experiences/ actions. Juxtaposition of ideas/images. Play with words.All comments taken from primary research.

DEFINING HUMOUR

“Humor is a complex and dynamic mode of communication that serves a number of important social functions” (Strawhorn, 2014, page iv).

“To amuse or not to amuse…that is the question.” William Fakespeare (Josh & Ramaize)

“The use of humor in the classroom has been suggested to increase instructional effectiveness, increase persuasiveness, more relaxed classroom environment, increased students motivation and can be used as a means of clarifying course material. Particularly, verbal humor such as word plays, funny stories, puns, and content related jokes play an important role in L2 learners’ development of (socio) linguistic and sociocultural competence” (Ziyaeemehr, 2011, page 111).

“One of the negative sides, particularly when I have had younger or less mature students, of using humour in the classroom, is its potential to undermine my role as the manager of the class and my students’ respect for me in that role. Possible to lose students’ respect” (Peachey, 2004, page 2).

Can go off topic and subject matter can go off on a tangent.

Difficult to find balance, especially with young students.

“Examples of verbal or word-based humor include wordplays, funny stories, puns, content related jokes, comic irony, metaphor, teasing, hyperbole, metonymy, riddles, tongue twisters and, funny examples/stories” (Ziyaeemehr and Kumar, 2014, page 4).

Highlights the depth of humour.

Different areas are appropriate for different levels.

Humourous material has to be chosen carefully in order to match the linguistic ability of the learners (Schmitz, 2002).

It may be a difficult task tailoring humour to a specific group as humour can be quite complicated.

Humour is broad and includes: sarcasm, wit, jokes, stories etc. It will allow the teacher to select examples accordingly.

THE NATURE OF HUMOUR

Have you used a humourous approach within any of your ELT lessons?

Do you think using humour as a teaching technique in your classroom benefits the learner?

RESPONSIVE RESPONDENTS RESPOND

It's most effective when a situation in class reminds me of a humourous proverb which I can teach students - since they know the context, they understand the humour much more easily. I also find that higher-level learners 'get' L2 humour much faster - lower-level learners often never 'get' it, because as is often said, if you have to explain the joke, it ceases to be funny.

During the course of my teaching I employed "bonding humour", "hate-me humour", "Laughing-at-life humour" or "put-down humour" to amuse the students and touch on their sense of motivation. It occasionally woke up bored students especially the "put-down humour". In my opinion it worked for me.

With higher students you can give funny anecdotes whereas with lower students you can be funny through actions.

I haven't seen many disadvantages apart from the fact that some students may think that it's a learning environment and humour should be left out of it.

In a mix nationality classroom students might have a different sense of humour.

Students can misunderstand jokes and take offence. This is particularly true if they think you are playing on national stereotypes.

Humour is highly personal, so some class members may not understand humour, and thus feel excluded when the rest of the group is laughing. There are also many taboos, which any tutor must take into account - causing offence is absolutely forbidden. A few thoughts about 'Political Correctness' here??).

All comments taken from primary research.

What do you call a half white/half black guy and an asian guy delivering a presentation… humour.

Okay, so should we teach it?

“Humor is generally recognised as a way of establishing and maintaining friendly relationships something that newcomers are often eager to do” (Bell, 2011, page 136).

Natural inclination towards humour, one reason being to build relationships.

Idea of fully embracing L2 to overcome frustrations and fully integrate at all levels.

“Differences between Japanese and non-Japanese styles of humour usage can sometimes be vast. Similarly, opinions and comprehensions of humour in educational institutes in far-eastern countries such as Japan may vary greatly from that of in western nations” (Stroud, 2013, page 72).

Institutes have significant say, major obstacle for ‘pro humour teachers’ to overcome when focussing on the benefits.

Cultural difference in type of humour, making it difficult to overcome.

“The ability to appreciate, comprehend and produce humor is a critical and necessary skillset for full fluency in English” (Strawhorn, 2014, page iv).

Highlights the relationship between humour and fluency and signifies the importance of humour, language seems to be deficient without it.

Implies that humour may only be exposed to advanced learners of the language.

It suggests that all teachers of English possess such a characteristic.

“Humor is not in their personality,” “they lack competence to create humor in L2,” and “they are more syllabus-oriented” were the most frequent cited reasons for the non-use of instructor humor” (Ziyaeemehr, 2011, page 111).

Do the negatives outweigh the benefits?

Can it be included into the syllabus?

Do you think it is important to teach the concept of humour?

EXPERT OPINIONS

Allows what has been learnt to be associated with a fun experience.

If the humour works (and doesn't offend!), then the learner is likely to enjoy the class more, and be more engaged and motivated.

It enables the students to be more active in the classroom and reduces boredom.

Creates a light atmosphere, helps focus.

Cultural differences. A thing in a particular culture may not be funny in another.

British humour is difficult to explain and if they don''t get it, it falls flat.

Some students don't get the jokes! You end up explaining the joke which takes a long time in some cases.

All comments taken from primary research.

FURTHER RESEARCH

Research the opinions of students.

Check the compatibility of different teaching approaches with humour.

Conduct a face to face interview in order to acquire richer qualitative data.

Observe lessons where humour is implemented.

CONCLUSION

All comments taken from primary research.

All comments taken from primary research.

Allows the person to get deeper into the culture of the language he/she is learning as well as making it a fun experience.

The value of humour is that it is implicit. The more you have to talk about humour - as a 'concept', for example - the less funny life gets. Mind you, I do think it's important - especially with English - to help students understand satire or sarcasm, as it's so key to understanding much of popular culture.

Allows students to understand the differences between the formal aspects of English Language and how that differs to informal.

As Shakespeare said, "The quality of humour is not strained: It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven." At least I think it was humour....

I think it is useful to develop rapport with the students and have on-going jokes with them, but not to laugh at them.

Humour varies with culture so learning a language involves learning its culture and humour.

REFERENCES BAX, M. and ZWART, J. (2001) Reflections on Language and Language Learning:

In Honour of Arthur Van Essen. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

BELL, N D. (2011) Humor Scholarship and TESOL: Applying Findings and Establishing a Research Agenda. TESOL Quarterly, 45 (1), pp. 134-159.

PEACHEY, N. (2004) Sense of Humour. [WWW] Available from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/sense-humour [Accessed 03/12/2014].

SCHMITZ, J.R. (2002) Humor as a pedagogical tool in foreign language and translation courses. Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, 15 (1), pp. 89-113.

STRAWHORN, M.D. (2014) Inside Jokes: English Language Humor From the Outside. Unpublished thesis (MA), University of San Francisco.

STROUD, R. (2013) The Laughing EFL Classroom: Potential Benefits and Barriers. English Language Teaching, 6 (10), pp. 72-85.

ZIYAEEMEHR, A. (2011) Use and Non-use Humor in Academic ESL Classrooms. English Language Teaching, 4 (3), pp. 111-119.

ZIYAEEMEHR, A. and KUMAR, V. (2014) The role of verbal humor in second language education. International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 3 (2), pp. 3-13.