Revitalizing Language Classes through Humorâ¿¿

Creating a fun loving atmosphere in language classes can make language learning a memorable experience. When most students are either passive, or unresponsive, or there are constraints for applying other techniques, a wide range of humorous activities can be used to help students practice their English in an enjoyable manner. Despite the scarcity of research on the pedagogical efficacy of humour in learning and teaching languages, almost all the available researches in this regard emphasize on humour as an effective tool which can help teachers to engage learners more actively in the classroom. However, one question still remains unanswered in the available research, and that is whether it is possible to train teachers to use humour. The present paper was an attempt to answer that question and to investigate possibilities of training teachers to use humour in their classes. In this small scale study, a qualitative approach was employed to collect data through training teachers to use humour, and two interviews before and after the training course. The justification for using qualitative approach was to collect richer data and to obtain a deeper insight about the possibilities of training teachers on how to use humour. Two focus groups of seven university instructors participated in the study. All the participants attended a ten-day intersession training course, on how to use humour in their classes. Each participant was individually interviewed twice; once before attending the training course, and one more time after they had applied what they were taught during the course. They were instructed to apply what they had learned in only two of their classes. The participants were then asked to write a report 2 months after they applied humour in their classes, and provide feedback of their observations of any positive changes in their work as well as their studentsâ¿¿ overall performance. The findings revealed that it is indeed possible to train teachers to apply humour effectively in their classes. The findings also justify the inclusion of humour in teacher training courses.