Application Of Humor In English Teaching Classroom

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

On the Application of Humor in English Teaching Classroom

Cheng Juan

Thesis statement: Humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. It has great significance in people’s daily life. And when it is applied into English teaching classroom in China, students can achieve more than ever. This thesis focuses on the application of humor in English teaching classroom.

1. Introduction

Background of English classroom teaching in china

2. Literature review

2.1. Definition of humor

2.2. Classification and function of humor

2.3. Previous studies

3. Humorous teaching

3.1 The definition of humorous teaching

3.2 Characteristics of humorous teaching

3.2.1 Being delightful

3.2.2. Being implicit

3.2.3. Being inspiring

3.2.4 Being cheerful

3.3 Principles of using humor in language teaching

3.3.1. Principle of democracy

3.3.2. Principle of context

3.3.3. Principle of combining science and flexibility

3.4. The purpose of humor in teaching

3.4.1. Making active classroom atmosphere

3.4.2. Creating harmonious relationship between teachers and students

3.4.3. Opening up students mind

3.4.4. Stimulating students’ desire for knowledge

3.5. Ways of using humor in language teaching and examples

3.5.1. Verbal humor

3.5.2. Visual humor

3.5.3. Humorous gesture

3.5.4. Humorus expression

3.6. The requirements for an English teacher to become humorous in language teaching class

3.6.1. To cultivate a positive and optimistic life attitude

3.6.2. To understand the ways of expressing English humor

3.6.3. To accumulate humorous language materials

4. Conclusion

Abstract:

For years, English teaching in Chinese classroom has been limited by many factors. Most teaching approaches lay particular stress on inculcating knowledge while neglecting the importance of students’ learning interest, attitude and confidence. As a consequence, most students consider English learning as examination-oriented. They learn, because they are forced to have the entrance examination if they want to go to college or do something that may need English. However, when humor is introduced into language teaching, the bad situation can be reversed drastically. But the fact is that the use of humor in language teaching class in our country does not draw enough attention. Thus the special teaching approach has not been widely applied. This thesis is to discuss the use of humor in language teaching class. It mainly introduces the definition of humor, the definition, function and application of humors teaching etc.

Key words: humorous teaching application language teaching

1. Introduction

Background of English classroom teaching in china

Humor is a perfect embodiment of human wisdom and language art. In western countries, sense of humor has been considered as a significant standard of measuring individuals’ self-cultivation and accomplishment. The British and the Americans are considered to be the most adept at the use of language humor. No wonder, in their school teaching, humor has been widely used and has been excellent in the classroom effect and efficiency (Li Caihong, 2002). Sue Home Linsky pointed in 1984 that in classroom teaching, whether a teacher is good at using humor, whether he or she has a sense of humor and whether he or she can use humor in an efficient way mean a lot to the development of the whole class. Meanwhile, Chinese scholar Jiang Bingqing (2007) held that teachers are supposed to use humor widely in teaching process to create a pleasant atmosphere for both teachers themselves and learners, if their teaching is to be effective and popular. However, from the current situation of Chinese school English teaching, especially that of high school, language teaching tends to focus on knowledge imparting, while ignoring students’ learning attitude and interest. As Shi Tengfei pointed out in 2007, quite a few teachers have noticed the inculcation of knowledge and logic deduction, but teaching effect is not as expected due to the lack of humor and wit. Some teachers know the significance of using humor in language teaching process; however, they just get the opposite of what they want, because they have no idea about how to cultivate ability of this special aspect of teaching. On the other hand, in China, empirical study of humor application in language teaching is definitely not enough and motivation of studies are at the stage of experience summarization. Chen Guohai did a research in 2007 and found that: according the existing research, the connotation of humorous teaching in our country is relatively positive while not extensive. Then compared with foreign countries, humorous teaching still held the back of education. From this perspective, it is necessary to emphasize the study of humorous teaching. This thesis is to discuss the ways of applying humor in language classroom, to offer some valuable suggestions. And in this way, students’ learning interests can be provoked, the integrated language ability can be improved, and teaching quality and effect can become better and better.

2. General knowledge of humor

2.1. Definition of humor

People of China and people of western world have different interpretation to humor. Ziv（1988）considered that humor is a kind of social information which makes people laugh. Attardo（1994）held that anything that has a potential of provoking laughter can be called humor. A famous humor researcher McGhee（1979）thought that the appreciation of anything that share the characteristics of being strange, absurd and ridiculous is humor. Koller（1988）pointed that humor is gradually losing its narrow conception and is shifting into a wider conception, that is anything that is relative to any form of laughter. A Chinese scholar, Jiang Bingqing（2007）considered humor as the some meaningful and funny words or actions. While Ye Qi (1998) thought that humor is cause by human’s breaking or violating the tradition or custom of mental or material life consciously or unconsciously in the form of conversation, writing, or action. About the different understanding of humor, Cheng Wengang (2003) held the point of view that the British and Americans have a wider interpretation of humor. In their culture, humor includes comic; while that of China is much narrower. In China, humor and comic are rooted from a same place. In other words, humor in China doesn’t include comic. Besides, in China, the word "humor" is complimentary, while in European countries and American it is neutral. As a result, Chinese interpretation of humor on one hand can provoke the use of humor in teaching for its complimentary aspects and on the other hand may hinder the deeper research of humor for its narrow conception. And the narrow meaning of humor may affect the efficiency of using humor in language teaching classroom. Therefore, it is urgent for Chinese educators to broaden the understanding of humor, to deepen the level of mastering humor and to make humor serve better to language teaching.

2.2. Classification and function of humor

According to different research purpose, humor can be divided into different categories by different standards. But generally speaking, Wang Dechun (1987) pointed that humor can be divided into verbal humor and non-verbal humor. Verbal humor is defined as using language in a playful, implicit and tactful way to trigger laughter and exert a subtle rhetorical effect. While non-verbal humor mainly means laughter-provoking images and actions. For instance, the most typical humorous image is cartoon such as caricature, political cartoon, science fiction comic, etc. Cartoon is a kind of silent and humorous art. Action humor is mostly expressed by character’s behavior and action. The effect of humor is mainly reflected in the interpersonal relationship. Morreal (1987) said if a group of people can laugh for a same thing, it means they share the same life experience, attitude or belief. Meanwhile, Norrick (2003) claimed that humor can shorten the distance between people. He said, because humor is a good style of communication, it can promote interpersonal interaction, polish friendship, and produce praises. Li Jimei (2010) classified the pragmatic function of humor as laughter-provoking function, response function (to create an active atmosphere, to avoid awkward situation, to ease conflict etc.), team cohesion creating and strengthening function. In 2006, Holmes used a questionnaire to investigate the relationship between humor using and intimacy. He concluded that, humor help people create intimate relationship with each other easily, so it can also be used to alleviate tense interpersonal relationship.

2.3. Previous studies

As is widely accepted, human is the only species which is endowed with a sense of humor, for human beings have a mental framework that is suitable for perceiving experiences in natural and culturally symbolic settings for amusement and fun (Palmer, 1994). According to Monro. D. H, an expert in humor theory research, humor is a term which may be used in both a wide and a narrow sense. In the wider sense, it is applied to all literature and to all informal speech or writing in which the object is to amuse, or rouse laughter in, the reader or hearer. In its narrower sense, humor is distinguished from wit, satire, and farce. It is less intellectual and more imaginative than wit, being concerned more with character and situation than with plays upon words or upon ideas; more sympathetic and less cruel than satire; more subtle than farce. On the other side, it shades into fancy and imagination, since it is concerned, as they are, with exploring the possibilities of unlikely situations or combinations of ideas, but differs from them in being concerned only with the laughable aspects of these imagined situations.

However, that definition is not a definite standard to define humor, because there are still so many theories trying to explain the existence, the function, the characteristics the style, and the elements of humor. For example, the relief theory holds that humor can provoke laughter which is a mechanism to help people keep psychological balance in a way of reducing psychological tension caused by fear, inhibition or hidden desires.

Superiority theory maintains the idea that, we laugh when we feel superior to others. In other words, if a person laughs about misfortunes of others, it is because the miserable situation of others reminds the person of his superiority compared with other people’s demerits. For example, in ancient Greece, Aristotle said that we laugh at inferior of ugly individuals, because we feel happy at feeling better than them.

The incongruity-resolution theory states that people may find things humorous when they come to realize the absurdity or incongruity of relating a specific situation with the real substance supposed to be related to the concept. And laughter is the direct response to the consciousness of incongruity according to Francis Hutcheson’s Thoughts on laughter.

Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo proposed the general theory of verbal humor in 1991, which has been seen as a significant progress in humor theory. This theory identifies a semantic model capable of expressing absurdity between semantic scripts in verbal humor. There are also experts who devote themselves in digging the elements of humor. One of them is Zac Toa, the author of The Five Elements of Humor. In his book he concluded that with the prerequisites of inflation and tolerability, humor has five fundamental elements: surprise, audacity, obsession, relief and ego. Of course, not every theory can be listed since the number of them is too large.

3. Main aspects of humorous teaching

3.1 The definition of humorous teaching

The use of humor in actual process of teaching is called humorous teaching which is one of humor forms that can be used in education. As Shi Tengfei (2007) said, humorous teaching is used by teachers to make teaching process more entertaining according to the content and the individual characteristic of teachers. That is to say, humorous teaching requires not only teachers’ sense of humor but also the combination of humor and teaching content. If humor and teaching are divided in some way, students tend to pay attention to humor while neglecting teaching content which is supposed to be the core of a class. For example some teachers bring humor and teaching together abruptly by telling some joke that is completely irrelative to teaching content. That is not humorous teaching. In real humorous teaching process humor and teaching content is an integral and indivisible unity. Nevertheless, when our Chinese teachers define humorous teaching, they are affected by the narrow definition of humor. As a result they give a comparatively narrow and complimentary interpretation to humorous teaching. For instance, Wang Kaixuan (2001) considered humorous teaching as using humorous language in a smart way to reveal truth and wit by provoking thought and laughter at the same time, to show the inter-relationship of different things, to create a funny teaching atmosphere in which teaching and learning get their best effect. Zhang Baochen (2001) held that, humorous teaching is teachers’ using funny, witty, tactful, and unexpected language or gestures to apply educational influence on students, to create an active teaching and learning environment and, by the way, to complete the task of teaching happily and efficiently. Thus, scholars tend to distinguish humor and other forms of laughter-provoking things such as comic and satire. It is always the case that they discuss much about verbal humor while neglecting non-verbal forms of humor for gestures or body language is most frequently considered as being funny, not humorous. Therefore, in teaching practice, teachers should pay more attention to the application of non-verbal humor.

3.2 Characteristics of humorous teaching

3.2.1 Being delightful

Humor can provoke laughter or smile, because it is full of fun. From this point of view, without fun, there is no humor. A hearty smile is caused by people’s aesthetic emotion. It is a sign of having fun and being happy. Therefore, humor used in teaching stirred the part of human nature which leads people to pursuit their curiosity about the world and to acquire knowledge. The delightful teaching-humor demonstrates a lot of fun which leads learners to accept, to acquire and to understand the teaching content with pleasure and memorize them effectively. The key of teaching-humor is to make the class be rich in wisecracker. Thus, being delightful is a strong internal power which pushes students to trace and absorb knowledge that they are interested in. Many psychologists claimed that the funny factor of teaching are greatly related to teaching efficiency. One of the Bulgarian psychologists Lozanov said that, when relaxed and happy, our unconscious mental activity is most conducive to stimulate individual’s personal super memory. And at these moments, the ability of receiving information, thinking and leaning can get into their best station. Lu Jiamei (1993) said that a delightful teacher can not only affect his students directly, but also enhance the attraction of activities. In this way, a delightful teacher plays a great role to raise the overall quality of students. All excellent teachers are of delightful nature. And almost all of their success begins from the exploit of their delightful part of nature. When a person tastes the happiness of getting to know something or achieving some certain goal, then the curiosity will be always with him or her, said Sue Home Linsky in 1984. The real purpose of teaching is to stir students’ subjectivity and creativity, whose core factor is the delightful part of human nature. This warns us the necessity of putting the development of human at the first place of education and emphasizing more on the interests of students. In other words, although knowledge itself may be dull and boring, teachers need to shift them into something really interesting in some way or any way when they tell it to students or apply it in reality.

3.2.2. Being implicit

Humor is the use of funny language and visualized techniques to give a hint or inspire people to think while laughing. A cartoonist Fang Cheng pointed that humor should be implicit in order to make people laugh and think at the same time. That is to say, in the transmission of scientific knowledge and thought and feelings, humors used in teaching are supposed to be implicit. Many teachers penetrate their teaching with shining wit and sparking wisdom to guide students to a spot where they unconsciously imagine or create something new and meaningful that might surprise everyone. If knowledge is straightly delivered to learners, everything can be seen in a glance without any effort of thinking, it will be difficult for learners to obtain the most ideal effect. Therefore, in teaching activities, teachers may often need the assistance of metaphor, exaggeration, parallelism and other rhetorical devices to create humor in order to gain great teaching effect. More specifically, teachers’ real intention should be placed in the deeper side of their sentences not the surface of it. And students should try to figure out the hidden meaning of their teachers. For instance, once in a class, the teacher wrote a sentence on the blackboard "Tom married young and had five children before he was 30." He encouraged students to guess the meaning of the sentence instead of giving Chinese version directly. Some students said it meant that Tom married a young wife. Some students said it meant Tom got married when he was young. Then the teacher just said in a joke-telling way that:" Do not marry young, unless you want to live life like Tom". Students burst out laughter when they realized that "marry young" means "marrying at a young age" at the same time they memorized the expression with deep impression.

However, being implicit doesn’t mean playing guessing riddles or being ambiguous or obscure, but means telling something in an indirect way. It has distinctive mood, real content and can be understood after some thought. For example, once when a professor was giving a lecture about protecting animals, he asked students a question "Do human beings have the right to kill animals?" One of his students proposed an interesting idea: "No, we don’t, because all animals are created equal." But the idea got an immediate opposition from other people who held that human beings are not animal. Then the professor told a little humorous story to his listeners that" A teacher asked his students what the difference of park and zoo is. Then one student said zoo is a place occupied by many kind of animals while park is occupied only by one kind of animal." Then students understood that human and animal are equal and human are supposed to respect and protect animals.

3.2.3. Being inspiring

Humor does not win just with its easiness, but with its containing of profound implication, wit and wisdom. These things enlighten people when they are laughing, make them realize the internal logic and distinguish truth and falsehood, justice and evil, and help them to get a better understanding of life philosophy. And via this, people can obtain an aesthetic experience and reach the realm of, as Hagel said, discovering the profound significance from little things. It’s true that humorous teaching produces laughter, but making people laugh is not the final purpose. The real intention of teaching-humor is to inspire people’s thought to acquire certain enlightenment and philosophy. Humorous teaching has effects on the students in many aspects. Students can acquire a lot of knowledge information form teachers’ humorous story to improve leaning efficiency and establish a clear knowledge system. They can dig more serious topics, good will, noble spirits and best wishes from humor. For example, once when a professor led students to discuss about smoking, he told such a humorous story: A man bought a cigarette in a department store and lit it while still in the store. Then a clerk told him to put it out because smoking is not allowed in the store. "What do you mean," the man said, "you sell cigars but do not allow smoking."" Well, we also sell bath towels." said the girl sweetly." From this little funny story, students see the significance of following public rules.

3.2.4 Being cheerful

Francis Bacon said, good talkers are good humorists. In other words, a teacher who is good at expressing himself always has a gift of using humor. Humorous teaching pushes students into a wider space of imagination and creativity, arouse their sense of pleasure. Feeling relaxed, happy, comfortable, they are more likely to be prepared to study in such an active atmosphere. The aesthetic characteristics of humorous teaching are generated by amusing language. The contents of humorous teaching are sometimes ridiculous and absurd, sometimes witty and strange, but no matter what they are like, they successfully arouse people’s pleasure of aesthetic delight and make people cheerful. A contemporary essayist Xu Lixin pointed brilliantly that humorous teaching is not only funny and thought provoking, but also a kind of elegant humor which can keep student in a cheerful state. And in this state, students can get a better perception of knowledge and better learning efficiency. Thus humorous teaching is an integrated reflection of teachers’ confidence, wisdom and competence. Word goes that those who are good teachers are good talkers. In a classroom, teachers should use humorous ways to reveal the secrets of the science kingdom, to demonstrate the way and nature of the wonderful social life and to explore the beauty of English itself to introduce rich and colorful western culture because only in this way learners can learn when they release their emotion and feelings and enjoy the beauty of learning itself.

3.3 Principles of using humor in language teaching

Humor in teaching and humor in life and art have the same root. But because of the specialty of humorous teaching, humor used in teaching has its own requests and characteristics and there should be certain principles to guide the application of humor.

3.3.1. Principle of democracy

In language teaching, teachers are dominant while students are the main body, and both of them are individuals with independent personality and dignity. Humor is kindness that reveals the bad and unreasonable part of life. No matter it is expressed by a tender smile or a good-will teasing, humor should be reflected by the pleasure of both the subject and object. Humorous teaching is based on education and love. That means the premise of it is not to hurting the self-esteem of learners’. Teaching is established on a platform of equality and cooperation, thus humorous teaching just services to set such a circumstance with the intention of promoting the full development of students. Humorous teaching can also cultivate students’ independence and confidence with which they can gradually shift from classroom study to autonomous learning. When they master the skill of learning all by themselves, they can set doubts to books, teachers and leaders, because they think independently and perceive the complicated world in their own point of view. No wonder, this is a good start for their future life.

3.3.2. Principle of context

Any time when humors are used in teaching, the context or situation, the content of lecture, and the characteristics of students must be taken into consideration. Teachers should take advantage of humor to influence the teaching process and try to make it successful, to influence students and try to get their active response. Teachers should discover humorous material, capture the best time and use humor in a proper situation. This can help improving the relationship between teachers and students. But teachers also must be cautious and avoid using humor just for humor’s sake while regardless the teaching content. If humor is abused in class, it may even hurt the self-esteem of some students.

3.3.3. Principle of combining science and flexibility

This principle means humor should be reflected in the process of teaching knowledge both in the books and out of books. The most fundamental requirement of teaching is to help students master one or more systematic science knowledge and skill. Lao She, a famous Chinese scholar, said when talk about humor, it is not only a question of language skill, but also a question of the appreciation for life. If anyone wants to "invent humor " without respecting life itself, the humor he invented would be of no use. As for humor applied in teaching, when separated from the teaching content and real necessity, it loses its art and value. Humorous teaching doesn’t mean using humor in every sentence the teachers utters but means using it at the point where the situation needs it. In a word the rule of using humor in teaching is to be scientific and flexible.

3.4. The effects of humor in teaching

3.4.1. Making active classroom atmosphere

A good atmosphere in classroom is a kind of psychology-related factors which influences the teaching effect greatly. It plays a significant role in constituting the scene of teaching. Since humorous teaching is emotional appealing and can be diffused rapidly, it has the power of creating active atmosphere efficiently. The long-term accumulation of teaching experience tells us that: in the classroom, laughter will create a positive atmosphere in which both teaching and learning get easier and more successful. As practice shows, only in an active teaching atmosphere, can students participate in creative thinking activities and make the learning and teaching process more colorful and wonderful. For instance, once when I am telling my students about how to use "must" to express speculation, I said suddenly:" Someone must be sleeping". Then students look around with curiosity, but they found nobody. Then I said:" Well. Someone must have slept." Then students looked at each other with some awkward expression. And finally, I said:" You know, someone is not in this classroom. Students then laughed at once. From this it is obvious that when some simple and interesting examples are demonstrated to students, the classroom atmosphere can be subtly shifted in to an easier and more relaxing state and students can acquire knowledge and skill while they are actually entertaining.

3.4.2. Creating harmonious relationship between teachers and students

Research results of anthropologists showed that humor plays a role as safety valve to relieve the conflict between people in human society. It helps to explain misunderstandings, to ease tension and anxiety. A famous education expert Sue Home Linsky thinks that if teachers lack a sense of humor, a wall between student and teacher which neglect the teacher-student interaction will be built step by step. And as a consequence, teachers and students will not understand each other as time goes by.( Sue Home Linsky,1995) Research shows that when teacher and students are in serious emotional confrontation, students tend to reject everything that comes from teachers and their emotion will hinder their understanding of the good-will requirements. Humorous teaching can help to create a harmonious relationship between teacher and students. Therefore, Haite holds that: sense of humor is one of teachers’ excellent and muti-functional characteristics. The most obvious function of it is to make students more active. In teaching, however, the real purpose of using humor is much more influential and valuable. It aims at connecting students and teachers by happiness. Bauman said in his Performing Art in 1989 that teaching-humor, is a reflection of teachers’ good human nature and merits. And this can shorten the psychological distance between teachers and students. Then, since students tend to listen to and believe his teacher if they like him, the teaching efficiency can be improved in this way. For example once, a student asked his teacher: hello teacher, did you cut your hair? The teacher did not answer directly, instead, he said: thank you. The student got upset, but soon, he understood what teacher meant and smiled happily.

3.4.3. Opening up students mind

It has been proved by both practice and theory that humor has certain influence on students’ mind. The modern psychologists tell us that, general people can only put all his mind and attention to a same thing for only 11 seconds without being interrupted by other things. So in the interval of class, jokes can work as doping, and make students more excited and less tired. And at the same time students will be better prepared for and have more interest in the following content. Thus, they memorize the knowledge for a longer time. Some research showed that humor can affect the acquisition of knowledge immediately. But it is not over. Its effect can be extended to a few weeks. For example, when a teacher helped his students to memorize the word "butterfly" he firstly divided the word into two parts "butter" and "fly". Then he explained that butter is a kind of food, while fly is a kind of insect which loves eating butter. Then this special fly is called butterfly thereafter. Then when students memorize the word, they also memorize the original story of the word. And after a long while, when students see words like "bedroom, blackboard, babysit" etc. they will wonder how these words come into being. When their curiosity drives them to check it out, they will maybe never forget the words again. In this way, a witty use of humor in classroom can open up students’ mind.

3.4.4. Stimulating students’ desire for knowledge

An American educator Haman said that, the knowledge taught by those teachers who do not try to arouse students thirst for knowledge is like a piece of cold pig iron which is so hard to digest and absorb. Fortunately, the art of humorous teaching can effectively stimulate students’ desire for knowledge thus directly benefits the acquisition of knowledge. According to his research, when explaining a definition of something, a humorous interpreting of the definition leaves better impression to listeners. People say that humors are like raisins in bread. Raisins make the bread tastier, while humor makes life more wonderful. For instance, when a teacher was giving a class about the "The Necklace", he went into the classroom with a shining golden necklace around his neck. Students were a little bit surprised and began to discuss about the thing. Then, the teacher began to say:"you must wonder why I wear then necklace today. Well, do you know what a necklace can bring to life?" Some students said: "happy and wealth"; some said: " it made you look cool". When students laughed happily, the teacher continued that:" you are right, but it also brings sadness and sorrow. Now read the short story written by the French writer Maupassant. " With curiosity, the students began to read the article.

3.5. Ways of using humor in language teaching and examples

Using humor in teaching process involves many forms of humor such as verbal humor, visual humor, humorous gestures and humorous expression. To show the using of humor in teaching process in a more detailed way, the following paragraph will demonstrate a whole class of humorous teaching. The content of this class is about micro-expression. In the initial stage, the teacher told a fictional story of his own experience and added some certain facial and body movement to show that he was lying. From this, students understand that people can figure out whether a person is telling the truth or just lying. And at the same time, the components of humor stimulate students’ interest in learning. After the warming up, the teacher use humorous ways to teach vocabulary part. Then, students learn the connection between the micro-expression and telling lies, as well as the relationship between micro-expression and other feelings of human being such as(angry, sad, happy, tempt, fear, surprising ) through reading material and ppt. In this process, the teacher also add some humorous components to stir the students’ interest. At the final stage, the teacher gave students an online testing.

3.5.1. Verbal humor

In the initial part, the teacher told such a story: To tell you the truth, things have been unlucky to me these days. I lost my cell phone the day before yesterday. (Slightly wipe his nose) What is worse is that my credit card was missing yesterday. (Light up the neck) and the money in it...missing! (Rub the hands) What do you think of my situation? When one of his students said:" I am sorry to hear that", the teacher answered:" I’m sorry too." Immediately students get confused. Then the teacher continued "Do you know why I am sorry? Because what I was saying was a lie!" students suddenly understood and grinned. The teacher continued to say"But have you noticed that just now I made such movements like touching my nose, my neck and hands rubbing?" Students answered "yes" simultaneously. Teacher: "These are the hints and clues that indicate I was lying. If you can’t recognize them, don’t worry about it. Today we’re going to learn it: micro-expression!" In this part, the sentence "I am sorry too" reversed the situation and provoked laughter and students also have a better understanding about the sentence. Here, the teacher used verbal humor and gestural humor to warm up the whole class.

3.5.2. Humorous gesture

In the vocabulary learning stage, there was a difficult word "involuntary". To help students get a better understanding of the word, the teacher stood by a strong student and asked him to give him a fist. The student did as he was told. He gave his teacher a heavy fist. The teacher shouted "Ah" unconsciously. And then, the teacher said sadly: " That reaction is involuntary". Students all smiled. Here, the teacher used humorous gesture to help students understand what they were learning.

3.5.3. Visual humor

In the process of displaying PPT, the author showed the students some funny and ridiculous expressions of people when they were lying. One of them was the Former president George w. Bush’s which made all of the students burst out laughter. Meanwhile, students got a deeper understanding of how to figure out whether a person is telling the truth or lying from his or her micro-expression.

3.5.4. Humorous expression

When the teacher explained the micro-expression when people get sad, the class had been on for almost 40 minutes. Students are a little bit tired. Then the teacher changed his expression. His eyes became empty, being consistent with the micro-expression of sad feature. He said:" can you see any focus in my eyes". When students saw the expression they could not help but laugh and they became focused again. Here, the teacher used humorous expression and voice to activate the atmosphere and got good teaching effect.

3.6. The requirement for an English teacher to become humorous in language teaching class

Since humor has such significance for English learning and teaching, what should teachers do to use humor more frequently and efficiently?

3.6.1. To cultivate a positive and optimistic life attitude

An optimistic life attitude is the true resources of humor. As an English teacher, we should love life, love English teaching and spare no effort to be an optimistic person. So we can be humorous and smart and able to bring laughter and smiles into our classroom.

3.6.2. To understand the ways of expressing English humor

The way of expressing English humor is different from that of Chinese, so knowing the expression of English humor is important for understanding and interpreting of humor. Having this ability, it will be easier for us to use, to create and to appreciate the real cultural connotation of English language.

3.6.3. To accumulate humorous language materials

Extensive reading is one of the best ways to accumulate materials about humorous language. In addition, listening to others and notice the funny stories, news, etc. also work well. After all this work, we can still classify these materials according to the teaching projects such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or some other things.

4. Conclusion

In conclusion, this thesis states that humorous teaching is a way of improve the efficiency of teaching and learning. It is delightful, implicit, inspiring and cheerful. When applied it into real language teaching classroom, the principle of democracy, of context and of combining science and flexibility should be followed. Humor in teaching can create active classroom atmosphere, create harmonious relationship between students and teachers. Still it can open up students mind and stimulate students’ desire for knowledge. Thus teachers should try their best to use humor to provoke students’ interest, curiosity and learning desire. Generally speaking, students who are not interested in a certain subject can not learn much regardless the teaching approaches used by teacher. Using humor together with imagination and creativity, may grab the attention of such students. Of course, teachers do not need to shift themselves into comedians to create an active atmosphere, they just need to see and say things from a different and fresh perspective. Besides, they need to cultivate a positive and optimistic life attitude, to understand the way of expressing English humor, and to accumulate humorous language material. Only in these ways can a teacher become an excellent humor user.

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