TEACHER’S HUMOR USE IN THE CLASSROOM AND STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF ITS EFFECTIVENESS AND APPROPRIATENESS

Abstract

Humor has long been a naturally indispensable part of human life. It has existed and developed since the very first day of human history as Bill Kelly said “After God created the world, He made man and woman. Then, to keep the whole thing from collapsing, He invented humor.” Humor is also considered an effective tool in every aspect; a sense of humor is “part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done” (Dwight David Eisenhower, American 34th President). Education is certainly no exception. Research has shown a large number of benefits of humor as a pedagogical tool in the classroom. The class’s atmosphere is more pleasant; students are more relaxed and feel at ease to participate. Particularly, there are possibly positive outcomes in their learning. For any teachers, especially the tired ones, humor is a useful prescription helping them, to be more comfortable and passionate in teaching. Humor makes them more approachable to their students. However, while the topic of humor has long been studied carefully in the West, it has just been paid attention to in Asia. Even in Vietnam, humor has not received adequate indication of interest. Not any empirical studies of humor have been found to the best of the researcher’s knowledge. Few studies seen could serve only as sources of humor techniques or materials for teachers as works of reference. They claimed the importance of humor in teaching, but there were no findings from real situations but a collection of affirmed literature review in the world. For those reasons, this study entitled “Teacher’s humor use in the classroom and students’ perceptions of its effectiveness and appropriateness” hopes to fill the gap. The central aims of the present research are to understand the use of humor of a teacher in the classroom and students’ perceptions of its effectiveness and appropriateness. The researcher used a single-case study; participants are one teacher and his students in one class. Three main sources form the basis of data collection and analyses were: questionnaires, interviews, and observations. The study found out the teacher’s perception of the importance of humor and his ways and types to generate humor. His humor style was also revealed through Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin, 2003). More interestingly, his six ways (categorized by the researcher) to make students laugh were described in detail after a long time of careful observations. Students’ perceptions of the teacher’s humor effectiveness were rated by Likert Scales. Readers can understand more thoroughly the benefits and degrees of the teacher’s humor as evaluated by the students. Appropriateness of humor was also examined, which is needed to form a comprehensive picture of humor use in the classroom. In all findings, there were comparisons between teacher’s and students’ views after all. Briefly, this study brings readers a colorful and all-sided picture of humor use as a pedagogical tool in a language classroom.