St. Petersburg State Mining University, the Russian
Federation
How
to Bring Foreign Language Learning to Life
Some English
teachers say that humour is out of place in the classroom, as teaching is a
serious process and teachers are not comedians to entertain their students.
According to them humour and laughter mean losing control of the class. But
humour in the classroom is not just telling jokes or being funny yourself. There are different forms of humour and humour-based strategies
which can be used for different purposes in the teaching of English such as puns, irony, jokes, idioms, puzzles, cartoons,
wisecracks, comic verse, phonetic games,
humourous stories, spontaneous humour, analysis of funny misprints, funny
multiple-choice items, witty quotations and proverbs, silly signs, grammar and
translation errors, etc.
There are lots of
benefits of integrating humour and humour-based strategies in foreign language
learning. The positive effect is obvious even on the physical level: when
people laugh this brings more oxygen
to the body and brain and stimulates mental activity and concentration. Humour-based
activities allow students to express themselves without fear of criticism.
Humour decreases anxiety, tension,
stress, and boredom. Humour increases comprehension, interest, and task
performance; increases motivation to learn and satisfaction with learning;
improves attitudes toward the subject. Humour promotes creativity of students;
besides, the understanding and appreciation of humour can enhance the students’
own sense of humour which is an important personality trait. Humour in the
classroom can break down the barriers to communication between teachers and
students so that teachers may better connect and transmit their messages.
By the way, humour is closely related to memory, as it
is usually easier to recall an experience that occurred in a humourous context.
That’s why lots of commercials are based on humour; puns and wordplays can be
found in many authentic materials. In fact, there is some evidence that
students have better recall of humourous examples than serious ones.
It
is a world-wide belief that the English people have a strange sense of humour,
and English humour is often said to be unfunny and even cheap. But maybe the English humour is difficult for us to
understand? It is abundant in idioms, phrases, homonyms and homophones. Most of
the English jokes are based on such play on words. To translate jokes from
English into Russian and vice versa it is necessary not only know the languages
properly, but also have a sense of humour, understand the mentality of both
cultures and feel the language. That’s why, as M. Goldenkov mentions in his
book Modern Active English “It’s not easy for the native speakers of Russian to
read the books like Three Men in a
Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) or Alice in Wonderland, as there the
footnotes explaining the point of every joke take more space than the text
itself. We don’t know many English idioms, rhymes, songs and sayings that most
jokes are based on. But for English speaking countries the books are classics!
[1]
So what can a teacher do to improve the
students' understanding of the English sense of humour? As a starting point a
teacher can try to introduce jokes which can be closely related to the topics
discussed such as Family Relations, Education, Science, Employment, National
Stereotypes and can make use of the jokes as warm-up activity before discussion
the topic to awake student interest or ask student to recall similar jokes on
the topic.
Another way to
use joke collections – ask students to
read them by their own and make their rating using a 10-point scale system –
the funnier they find the joke the more points it gets.
Jokes can be used
to develop student logical thinking skills or creative abilities. A teacher can provide
students with parts of the joke and ask to choose punch lines for every joke or
make their own ones and then compare with the original punch-line.
Humour can also
be used when teaching grammar. For example, the teacher can ask students to
retell English jokes in the reported speech.
As usual students
understand linguistic jokes better than cultural jokes. The English teachers
should explain the common difficulties in understanding linguistic jokes which
are based on ambiguous understanding of words and phrases, include homophones
and often untranslatable.
Humour is a
phenomenon which is influenced by culture. What is humourous or funny in one
culture may not be humourous or funny in another. That is why using humour in
classes can contribute to understanding the national spirit and if language
teachers can integrate jokes into language teaching as part of teaching
material, students can improve both their linguistic skills and cultural
competence.
Humourous breaks during a lesson promote learning and
make the overall learning process more enjoyable. The choice of humour material that teachers use should be
logically connected with the topic, grammatical or cultural component he/she is
teaching or examining. Ideally, if language teachers can integrate humour with
content and use both planned and spontaneous humour. Discussing the topic Foreign Language Learning I ask my
student to read the article on English spelling reform [2] in which a new style
of English spelling is suggested to be introduced. Then I ask their opinion of
the article and only after discussion I mention that it is a humourous article
and they shouldn’t take it to heart.
Of course, everyone has a different sense of humour,
but definitely certain jokes are inappropriate for using in class. Teachers
must avoid discussing some controversial or taboo topics (like racial, sexual,
political, etc.). On the other hand the appropriate and skillful use of humour
in the classroom will definitely raise the popularity of a teacher among the
students, as according to numerous surveys, the sense of humour is one of the
main characteristics of the ideal teacher.
That’s why teachers should take humour seriously; it is no laughing
matter.
Finally I’d like to sum up with the words of Dee
Dickinson “Classrooms in which laughter is welcome help bring learning to life”
References
1.
Ãîëäåíêîâ
Ì.À. ÎÑÒÎÐÎÆÍÎ! HOT DOG!
Ñîâðåìåííûé àêòèâíûé English. - 2-å èçä., Ì.: ×åÐî, 1999. -
272ñ.
2.
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humour/spelling-reform.html