The Use of Humour in Language Teaching

Abstract

Learning a second language needs a “positive” classroom environment. The main aim of this paper is to look through the effectiveness of “humour” in second language classroom with the viewpoint of Bangladeshi high school graduate students and their instructors. This research will investigate students’ views and the frequency of what extent they use humour in their classroom and which particular skills the learners think that they improve via humour. This research verifies, consistently with past studies, that the use of “humour” in ESL classrooms reduces anxiety, improves classroom atmosphere, increases student-teacher empathy, and even assists learning. This research is also specifically designed to find out whether using humours to teach vocabulary bring out significant learning outcomes in language classroom. More exclusively, students reported greater satisfaction of the learning process when humour is used. The findings suggest that the use of “humour” has a positive outcome on the language teaching setting in increasing motivation and success thereafter and it may aid the process in many aspects such as memory of text. Along with encouragement, “humour” should be used by language teachers to make their classrooms more attractive and advantageous to learning.