An Empirical Research On The Application Of Humor To College English Teaching

In order to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of foreign language teaching, language researchers and educators have always focused their attention on the study of language teaching methodology and proposed the communicative approach, the whole language approach and the task-based approach. Among them, the task-based approach has gained prominent significance thanks to the fact that it is based on language acquisition theories and is student-oriented. Its ultimate goal is the maximum development of the students'ability to use the target language. However, the application of the proposed approaches to English teaching and learning in colleges and universities across China have generally failed to produce satisfactory results in motivating the students and arousing their interests in English though it has helped to improve the teaching effectiveness to some extent. It is possible that when teachers are concentrated on some teaching approach; they tend to neglect how to give full play to the charm of classroom language, activate classroom atmosphere, and mobilize the enthusiasm of students. Those innovative approaches proposed by language researchers and instructors after much nerve-racking efforts lay too much emphasis on the impartation of linguistic knowledge and language practice per se. They do not pay adequate attention to the cultivation and stimulation of students'interests in the foreign language. The approaches are applied under the assumption that students should be interested in the target language and have enough motivation in their language study. However, it can not be denied that no small number of Chinese students lack interest and motivation in their language studies. This not only hampers their language learning, but also deals a severe blow to the enthusiasm of language teachers for their carefully prepared teaching plans do not turn out to be as effective as they expected.Based on Stephen Krashen's"Affective Filter Hypothesis"in second language acquisition, this thesis analyzes the mechanism of humor and its positive impact on the psyche of the foreign language learners, and explores the advantage and feasibility of incorporating humor into college English teaching. The research results indicate that the application of humor to college English teaching can lower the psychological pressure of the students, create a positive learning environment conducive to students'language acquisition and greatly stimulate students'enthusiasm for learning English. Besides the incorporation of humor into language lessons goes beyond what has been mentioned above because it can also help students develop a humorous personality and a positive outlook for life.In order to investigate the effects of pedagogical humor on college English lessons, the author conducted a pilot study of non-English major college students and foreign language instructors using three sets of questionnaires. Both the teachers and the students are from the PLA Information Engineering University (IEU) in Zhengzhou. The teachers are faculty members of the Foreign Language Department while all the students are non-English major sophomores.During the first stage, the survey participants, 80 foreign language teachers and 300 students, were required to answer the survey questions respectively. Their answers to the questionnaire demonstrate their attitudes toward the current language pedagogy, their opinions on its effectiveness and efficiency, their understandings of humor and its effects on language teaching and learning. Then, out of the 300 students surveyed, the author picked up 80 volunteers at random to form the experimental class to carry out the teaching experiment. In the experiment, different methods were used in two lectures. The first lecture was conducted in the traditional way, using inquiry based questioning to check students'preview work, explaining new words and phrases, analyzing key sentences and the structure of the first part of the text and finally conducting an oral practice. In the next lecture, the teacher incorporated humor in the study of the second part of the same text, though he also dealt with new words and phrases, key sentences, the structure of the text and an oral practice. For example, when explaining the meaning and usage of some new words, the teacher would use some lively and humorous cartoons, comics or video clips; when elaborating on the language points encountered in the text, the teacher would provide some interesting contexts closely related to their personal experiences or at least well-known to most of them. The teacher would also try to tell some humorous stories which would help the students comprehend the theme. However, not all the humor incidences were teacher-initiated, some were student-initiated. The students would be encouraged to incorporate humor in their class discussions as well as language point practice. When the lectures were over, the author surveyed the 80 students again by using the third set of questionnaire to get an understanding of their attitudes toward the two lectures.From the questionnaire surveys and empirical study, the author has drawn the following conclusions:1. In the college English classrooms surveyed, there is a lack of humor and humorous means. Almost all the teachers and students believe it is necessary to incorporate humor into classroom teaching practice.2. The application of the humor to college English teaching is in complete accordance with the"student-centered, teacher-led"teaching philosophy which is now widely advocated. It can effectively arouse the students'interests and motivation, reduce their anxiety, and lower the"affective filters". As a result, they can experience the pleasure of learning and begin to study actively instead of passively, thus facilitating their language acquisition. 3. Humor can help to create a cordial and harmonious atmosphere and establish a democratic and equal teacher-student relationship. The students will have a sense of identity and friendliness with the teacher and believe in his teaching.4. Both the teacher and student respondents express a positive view toward the incorporation of humor into English teaching. It is not only possible but also necessary for the language teachers to cultivate a sense of humor and apply the proposed pedagogy more in the language class.Lastly, the thesis proposes some principles and methods that should be followed in the use of humor in the classroom. In addition, some suggestions are offered to foreign language teachers regarding how to improve their own sense of humor and cultivate a humorous personality in their students. They may be useful for helping foreign language teachers to improve their teaching.