"Why do elephants paint their toenails red? So they can hide in cherry trees!"
"If your son flunks out of school and is illiterate and anti-social, what can he grow up to be? A Ma'ani policeman"
"What is gray, has four legs and a trunk? A mouse on vacation"
"Why did the cookie cry? Because his mother had been a wafer for too long"
The above are examples of jokes that illustrate a few elements of humor. There has been a lot of research done on humor, and you would be very surprised at the results! The most common element of a joke is that it first creates an incongruence, then it fixes it. Look at the first joke, who could imagine an elephant painting its toenails any color, let alone red. A strange situation is created, and the punch line later ties it together. The first joke has a silly, almost nonsense tie-up. The second has an aversive (a bit aggressive, against something or someone) tie-up. The third has a twist (unexpected, you thought you knew the answer - elephant) tie-up. The fourth joke has a "semantic" tie-up - it is a play on words (wafer, at type of cookie, instead of "away." These jokes illustrate just a few elements of humor, there are many, many more.
One consequence of using humor in the classroom, is discovering that different people respond to the same types of jokes differently. Therefore, if you tell the same joke to enough people, some will love it, some will be confused, some will be irritated, and some will be very upset. I learned this when I did research with a university professor who wanted to discover what the best predictor was to determine how well students would rate their professors at the end of the course. We tested a lot of variables, including what grade they thought they were going to receive. His research showed that the best predictor of how well the students either liked or disliked the professor was how they related to the humor of the professor. Professors who used a lot of jokes often ended up getting "bimodal" evaluations - lots of positives and lots of negatives, almost like it had been two different classes!
This is not intended to be a dissertation on humor, just a short discussion on some variables that affect our perception of humor - I will leave the subsequent discussion about how to use it in classrooms to you all!
As you can guess after looking at the jokes above, some people may not like them because they don't understand the tie-up, or that it takes them longer to make the connections. And when they are in a social setting, and many people are aware that they are slower, you can see why they may not like to hear jokes too often. To add to this problem, there is another type of joke that also starts as an incongruence, but the punchline doesn't tie it up - these can be very frustrating for some folks.
Throughout history, humor has been used to serve at least four major purposes - 1) As a relief, a defense mechanism, as a means of detachment (giving us a little bit of distance from something painful), 2) A source of superiority, aggression, even hostility (a tool to be used against others), 3) A benevolent mechanism (a way to show tenderness, affection, or affiliation), and 4) A philosophic tool to get us to speculate about an idea or concept playfully.
I suspect that many of our students have been on the wrong ends of jokes, and try to avoid them, maybe even trying to use them against others sometimes to deflect attention on themselves. We all know about bullying, and humor is simply the most deadly weapon in that ugly game. Don't get me wrong - I love to use humor in the classroom (those of you who know me know this :), but I have learned to create trust and some supportive dynamics before I engage my students. As I said, this is just a bit of fuel for a larger fire - I can't wait to hear from you all..............
Thanks Bassam for this idea, now I expect to hear from you first!
"If your son flunks out of school and is illiterate and anti-social, what can he grow up to be? A Ma'ani policeman"
"What is gray, has four legs and a trunk? A mouse on vacation"
"Why did the cookie cry? Because his mother had been a wafer for too long"
The above are examples of jokes that illustrate a few elements of humor. There has been a lot of research done on humor, and you would be very surprised at the results! The most common element of a joke is that it first creates an incongruence, then it fixes it. Look at the first joke, who could imagine an elephant painting its toenails any color, let alone red. A strange situation is created, and the punch line later ties it together. The first joke has a silly, almost nonsense tie-up. The second has an aversive (a bit aggressive, against something or someone) tie-up. The third has a twist (unexpected, you thought you knew the answer - elephant) tie-up. The fourth joke has a "semantic" tie-up - it is a play on words (wafer, at type of cookie, instead of "away." These jokes illustrate just a few elements of humor, there are many, many more.
One consequence of using humor in the classroom, is discovering that different people respond to the same types of jokes differently. Therefore, if you tell the same joke to enough people, some will love it, some will be confused, some will be irritated, and some will be very upset. I learned this when I did research with a university professor who wanted to discover what the best predictor was to determine how well students would rate their professors at the end of the course. We tested a lot of variables, including what grade they thought they were going to receive. His research showed that the best predictor of how well the students either liked or disliked the professor was how they related to the humor of the professor. Professors who used a lot of jokes often ended up getting "bimodal" evaluations - lots of positives and lots of negatives, almost like it had been two different classes!
This is not intended to be a dissertation on humor, just a short discussion on some variables that affect our perception of humor - I will leave the subsequent discussion about how to use it in classrooms to you all!
As you can guess after looking at the jokes above, some people may not like them because they don't understand the tie-up, or that it takes them longer to make the connections. And when they are in a social setting, and many people are aware that they are slower, you can see why they may not like to hear jokes too often. To add to this problem, there is another type of joke that also starts as an incongruence, but the punchline doesn't tie it up - these can be very frustrating for some folks.
Throughout history, humor has been used to serve at least four major purposes - 1) As a relief, a defense mechanism, as a means of detachment (giving us a little bit of distance from something painful), 2) A source of superiority, aggression, even hostility (a tool to be used against others), 3) A benevolent mechanism (a way to show tenderness, affection, or affiliation), and 4) A philosophic tool to get us to speculate about an idea or concept playfully.
I suspect that many of our students have been on the wrong ends of jokes, and try to avoid them, maybe even trying to use them against others sometimes to deflect attention on themselves. We all know about bullying, and humor is simply the most deadly weapon in that ugly game. Don't get me wrong - I love to use humor in the classroom (those of you who know me know this :), but I have learned to create trust and some supportive dynamics before I engage my students. As I said, this is just a bit of fuel for a larger fire - I can't wait to hear from you all..............
Thanks Bassam for this idea, now I expect to hear from you first!
I believe u r absolutely right; humor is Double-edged sword it can be useful for relaxing after a tumble weed start of a lesson(it will get both of the teacher and the sts from an impasse), changing the teddy nature in some classes, drawing sts attention to my words, breaking the routine and to make sts feel that the English class isn't a tough in-understandable subject. On the other hand a good teacher should be clever enough to know how and when to use humor otherwise sts will dislike it because in the end of the day they don't want to spend their class time listening to irrelevant jokes from the teacher, This may cause them to feel board and they will stop taking the teacher and the subject seriously.
ReplyDeleteRania
that's really cool
ReplyDeleteand i do agree that its very crucial
and there's alot of thesis about that in which they focus on this part
thank u
Tahani
Thanks Michael and Bassam...
ReplyDeleteI do agree that teachers should use humor in the classroom between time to time but it should be controlled as it has to be suitable to the level of the students especially when it comes to the "tie-up". In order to do this, teachers have to be creative since humor is considered a significant teaching method that helps in creating a conducive to learning atmosphere. When the teacher creates such supportive atmosphere, students will more likely be engaged in the learnng.
I would like to quote this from an article " Humor is a catalyst for classroom "magic," when all the educational elements converge and teacher and student are both positive and excited about learning. [teachers] can foster classroom "magic" through improved communication with students by possessing a playful attitude and a willingness to use appropriate humor" (Duffy & Jones, 1995). Humor in classroom can be other things than jokes, it can also be riddles, puns, funny stories, humorous comments and other humorous items. More important things about humor are that it must be relevant to the learning situation, it must not be directed to cedrtain individual or group of students.In order to achieve the wanted effect humor must be delivered in an appropriate way that affects the receipients.
Zeinab