Humor In The Classroom
-A Guide For Language Teachers and Educational Research-
Written by : Nancy D. Bell and Anne Pomerantz
Education, and in particular language education, is serious business, but as we have seen throughout this book humor does have something very important to teach us about how language is used and to contribute to how it is taught and learned in classrooms. Humorous language—whether spoken or written—is, by its very nature, polysemous and ambiguous. Its meanings are embedded in multiple layers of context and are always negotiated within and through interaction. What is funny to one person may be lost on another. And, although it might seem like such characteristics are particular to humor, we have argued that this is not the case. Much of what we have said about the workings of humor applies to language and communication more broadly, and the historic omission of non-serious language in educational research has serious consequences for how we understand language use and indeed even language learning in classroom contexts. We have thus argued that language educators, educational researchers, and policy makers would do well to think about some of the changes brought about by globalization and new technologies not as a challenge to be overcome but, rather, as an opportunity to rethink some of the ideas that have long dominated our practices.
What Is Humor and How Does It Work?
Humor is not merely a key with respect to its role in interaction, it is key to understanding what language is and how we negotiate meaning with one another. Humor is both universal and specific. We all know that what counts as funny varies across people and changes over time. A joke that is funny in France might fall flat in front of a Japanese audience. What’s more, even people who share the same language, ethnicity, or culture might not share the same sense of humor.
Functions of Humor
Martin (2007) grouped these functions into three categories:
1. Humor for stress relief and coping
2. Humor for establishing and maintaining social bonds due to the positive emotions it evokes
3. Humor for prompting social action and exerting influence over others
Many classroom studies conducted in this vein are predicated on a transmission or banking model of learning, in which knowledge is passed from expert to novice. Here, the learner’s mind is conceived of as an empty vessel, waiting to be filled with bits of new information. Consequently, it is no surprise that much classroom-based research in education has focused on the role of teacher talk in learning, as this is seen to be a primary source of knowledge. This view of learning has given rise to a robust search for what teachers and policy makers call “best practices” or ways of organizing and delivering instruction that maximize learning outcomes. For researchers working within this vein, the short-term goal is to identify interactional patterns within a classroom, with an eye to whether and to what extent particular patterns might facilitate learning. The long-term goal is, quite simply put, an attempt to standardize the practice of education so that it becomes as efficient and effective as possible.
How Does Humor Work in Language Classrooms?
We have discussed about what humor it is and the range of communicative resources deployed in each episodes ((i.e., language, gesture, posture, pitch, etc) but in an adult ESL classroom it may be doesn’t work. Thus, Bushnell (2008) found the strategies in humor called comic styling. Example:
T : (. . .) a:::nd December? (.)
it’s the [English e. ah hah?]
ABBY : [(makes correction on blackboard)]
T : [December.]
ABBY : [(raises chalk in congratulatory gesture)]
(1.0) (Abby returns chalk)
ABBY : Very goo:::d (syl syl syl)? (claps hands)=
T : =Yeah look at [very goo:::d.]
ABBY : [(V gesture)]
At the start of this extract, Abby has spelled the word December wrong on the blackboard, and the teacher has corrected her. On making the change, Abby raises her chalk in a triumphant gesture and then offers herself an exaggerated token of praise, thus momentarily speaking through the voice of a teacher. The teacher then offers Abby a positive, but somewhat less exuberant, evaluation of her effort to amend the spelling of December on the board.
Making Humor Teachable
Nancy has argued that humor instruction tends to have one or more of the following desired results (Bell, 2009, 2011):
1. Identifying humor
2. Comprehending humor
3. Producing humor
4. Responding to humor
Putting It All Together
This is some additional tips and some examples specific to teaching humor itself:
1. Define Your Focus
2. Do Your Research
3. Develop Assessments
4. Plan the Instruction
In highlighting the workings of humor, we note that much of
what makes non-serious language use interesting to researchers, is also what
makes it so appealing to language users. Humor is, as we saw, difficult to
categorize and even harder to interpret. A single instance of humor
can be used to accomplish multiple social functions at once, and not all
participants will necessarily recognize the work being done. Yet, humor is, for
many of us, a familiar and frequently present form of language use. To neglect the
teaching of humor is to
deny developing bilinguals access to a powerful communicative resource, potentially contributing to their marginalization during this type of talk. We hope that researchers will continue to explore
the ways that humor and language play work in language classrooms in order to
extend these arguments and move them toward the main-stream so that
humor is seen, like other types of language, as a flexible resource that can
be used in multiple ways for multiple ends. As we
all—language teachers,educational researchers, and policy makers—struggle
to make sense of some of the changes to communication brought about by
globalization and new technologies, we hope that we have convinced you that a
focus on humor, language play,and other forms of creativity may be just what is
needed to chart a new course.
You can see the complete resume from : http://dinnasaur.blogspot.co.id/
Or Download the e-book from : https://www.academia.edu/35320476/Humor_In_The_Classroom.pdf
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Author
Ahoy, It is me Triska. A college student of English Education Department in University of Singaperbangsa Karawang. I am a-pixie-dust-enthusiast. I love to watch a movie or Korean Drama and also love to write my blog.
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