This is a very good technique. It develops understanding and makes them connect words with experiences and mental images. I have used this in class and it has been a lot of fun.

I think the use of humor helps learning in all areas. It is indeed very powerful. Once I thought about researching this. As far as I know Cognitive Load Theory and Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning have not investigate it.

Humor helps bring the afective filter down.

Hello!

I have a book by a French psychologist who says that you learn more and better when you have fun. (I must confess that I can't find this book, sorry!) But I think that works because you will feel relaxed when you laugh.

In another book (this one is lost... I lent it...) they say that your memorization will be much better when you get emotioned.

There are good ELT books on humour:

- Grammar with Laughter

- Lessons with Laughter

Great question.

Personally, I've always tried to use humor in the class; be it self-depricating, satire, or one of the myriad other ways to get a laugh. My students seem to enjoy it but I cannot quantifiably say that it improves retention because it is just my style of teaching.

There are newer studies out there that link emotionally charged lessons with higher retention (I think the Optimal Levels! EFL books by Robert Murphy utilize this theory) but I can't think of any research done on it at this moment. If I find the a articles I had on that, I will share the links here.

Hi Mr Dunn;

I am grateful for your interest. I will soon have a conference about this topic and also think of relating my master's thesis to it. I found some very limited material to review but you are right, humour generally is being neglected in many disciplines. It has a spectrum from cognitive science to linguistics to literature. However, the more I look at it and think about it the more it gets challenging. Having been a professional comedian once in my home country and a stand-up performer, I realize that looking at humour through the lens of science, be it social or neuroscience is not a 'laughing matter', especially when it comes to using it as a teaching tool ! .Experiencing first hand the benefits of humour usage in 'even' proficiency classes, I am eager to bring this topic to the table of academia . Let's see how it works .

What type of humour did you use? It's not easy to pass on sense of humour from one language to another.

Dear Mr Eungpinichpong;

You are absolutely right ! I have never tried to 'translate' words, rather transpose humour by even making fun of the word by word translation. Also, using humour in a multicultural setting requires a great deal of cultural sensitivity for sure.My approach to humour is mainly based on seeing the comedic part of everyday situations, giving entertaining examples of real life and time to time personifying grammer/pronunciation points. Introducing the sound "Schwa" as a homeless , neglected sound in the "vowel sounds society' or giving funny narratives and examples while introducing a difficult and 'dry 'grammar point. Having had 20+ years of career as stand -up actor and a multilingual master of ceremony, I experience the benefits of 'enter-teaching' even and maybe especally in academic English classes, which require intense focus and commitment from adut ESL learners. I think , we do not even need to have an acting background as long as we can make our curriculum 'smile' a little.

Talking about humor, I found one website that is humorous and at the same time gets our students to think. They advise that teachers use lateral thinking. http://www.thecourse.us/students/lateral_thinking.htm

I have conducted some research on the effect of humor on the memory of preventive health messages and it is obvious that humor has a positive effect not only on memory but also on the persuasiveness of health messages... I also studied how children detect and understand humorous text passages. I can send you the results of these studies.

Thank you Nathalie, that would be great !

Hello Leyla,

I am interested in the use of humor in education as well. However, it is interesting to note that I have not found publications yet that link the use of humor directly with learning. As we know, it is difficult to disentangle all the various factors that influence learning. I would love to see Nathalie's (Blanc - last comment above) results. That sounds promising!!

Humor has been shown to have a number of functions in the classroom.

In language education, humor certainly has the added bonus of representing content to be taught. Humor is part of a culture (and quite an important one I dare say ;), and as such, humor should be part of language classes.

A colleague and I published a few articles on this topic. I will gladly email them to you if you are interested.

Great question, interesting answers. James Dunn, like you my natural teaching style is to throw in a bit of humour here and there (such as it is). My feeling is that it grabs student attention and so makes the class more engaging. I think student engagement is the important point, whether one uses humour or another approach to facilitate that. I sometimes wonder if some professors go to far with it, though. Classes that end up looking like a set in a stand-up comedy club I suspect result in the message and content being obscured to the point where the students remember all the funny jokes but not the content they were supposed to be learning. I'd be interested to know if anyone knows of any research in that area? At what point does it all become too much?

Very good question Tim; In order not to fall back into the role of a stand up comedian(who I have been for more than 20 yrs) I am trying to adjust the wit to the point of grammar, commentary on the reading topics, describing the vowels and consonants in a 'smiling' way. The moment you start to joke about topics and issues which are not related to the curriculum, they might only remember the joke but not the lesson. That is a very important point. I am about to take this topic and wrap my grad. paper around it. Unfortunately there is not much done in that area. Also, culturally sensitive topics, sarcasm, and self deprecating humor should be considered and applied very carefully. I could write a book about how it works and should work "on the stage " or "on TV", but I would like to know the 'classroom setting' of humor, which is a new aspect to me. That's the reason I came up with this question. Thank you for your input. Regards, Leyla

@ Tim: A colleague of mine showed a video once that really caught my attention. It was a large lecture setting and he video-taped the students. If I remember correctly they would sit quietly in their seats and you could almost see their attention drifting off. Then my colleague infused humor and "boom" students' heads would come up and they seemed to be attentive yet again. That was the case several times.

One of our students tried to capture the relationship of humor and learning and retention in a study (delivering content(-specific) with humor and without humor). Unfortunately there were no significant differences in retention (again if I remember correctly). It is hard to create a setting in which we can study the influence of humor on learning without other influences. But I would love to try and disentangle it all more. If colleagues here are interested in collaborating on a bigger study with more data, I would love to talk about it.

HI Manuela;

I would love to have a look at your work, actually I sent you a message using this website and required the articles. I have seeen your titles and got excited. I had been a political satirist, Talk show host and comedian/actor in Turkish/German prior to coming to Canada and becoming an English teacher (and Master's student at UBC) Now I am trying to combine my 20+ years of comedic experience with my teaching skills. I am having tremendous results in motivating my students , even ina very intens course like IELTS . Tomorrow I will participate in a conference at UBC.My topic will be the role of humour in second language acquisition. Let's see how this topic will be received.

Dear Layla,

I hope your conference went well! I just sent you an email. I apologize for the delay. I would like to hear about your experiences with using humor. I would also be interested in how you measure the results and how they are linked to humor. I am happy to chat sometime on Skype as well.

An anxious students can't acquire English as a second language or as a foreign language according to Crashen. A student whose effective filter is low will yield better results. I believe that humor can help a student learn more. We all need to be careful though because humor is culturally tied and teachers could end up hurting people's feelings.

Thank you, the conference went very well and the topic was well received by the attendees. It was interesting to observe how something related to 'laughing, smilling and relaxing' could not easily be seen as academic., but still has to be taken seriously.On the other hand, since I presented the issue in the light of many related disciplines (neuroscience, psychology, linguistics), it was quite academic.I hope we will find a way to have more research on this issue.

Dear Leyla

my article on humor and learning could be helpful I reckon

good luck with your research

a.

hi. using the sense of humor is a delicate job . it is not a simple task for teachers to use this sense to improve learning. it needs knowing the personality traits of the students. teachers should be aware of threatening somebody's face by some jokes. it is an artistic job not suitable for all contexts, teachers and students. best

Students are under the social press, being in the totalitarian-market education, but every human being is created for learning. The material is very difficult. What is the role of a humanistic teacher in this situation? The aim is not to intimidate, but to liberate, to motivate and "to open the locks" of understanding. Humour is as a creative tool for stress reduction, mutual confidence and faith in students' own abilities.

I carried out some empirical research in this field and according to the results i got in my study, humour (if appropriate and adjusted to the given learning objectives and context) has positive impact on students' motivation, but also on the group dynamics during the classes/lectures: it builds rapport and reduces anxiety. I am not sure about cognition and learning abilities, but I am sure that when you have positive, relaxed and encouraging atmosphere in which you can handle challenging situations and tasks with a (good) laugh, everything seems to be possible :)))Article Using humour in teaching English as a foreign language at mo...

usage of humour is required in classroom, but the teacher must be very cautious about time it, reaction of the students.

Nice Contribution Irina Mikhailovna Pechonkina

Hi Leyla,

When I worked as a language teacher I found humour was impotant.

You will find an illustration in this essay.

if you cannot access it, please let me know.

Best wishes,

Kevin Williams

Article Work, Play and Language Learning: Some Implications for Curr...