HUMOR IN THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

HUMOR IN THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM: TEACHING ENGLISH IN JAPAN (2019)

by Milen Martchev and Jacob Schnickel

For this study, a group of foreign (i.e. non-Japanese) English language instructors teaching English at universities in Japan provided their attitudes, beliefs and in-class practices (including both positive and negative aspects), regarding their humor usage in the classroom. A set of Japanese university students, too, shared observations on interactive humor in their English language classes, identifying both benefits and possible drawbacks. We analyze the language teachers' experience with different types and amounts of attempted classroom humor, and correlate student interest to different humor frequency levels. We also look at how often the students themselves attempt to be funny in their interaction with instructors, as well as their attitudes to different types of classroom humor. While the results from both groups are analyzed to create a picture of this specific context, our conclusions are within a broader research framework and this will likely be of interest to language educators in general.

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