Humour in the Second Language Classroom- An Analysis

Abstract

The human race has one really effective weapon and that is laughter.

• Mark Twain

As per the words of Mark Twain, humour plays a vital role in facing the humanity.  It will help everyone to understand the inseparable link between the language and the culture. It can also decrease the stress associated with learning a foreign language and promote integrative motivation to help the students in the second language classroom, it also develops their own sense of humour and emotional intelligence among themselves. Many students do not want to learn English as they are not interested in it. In English teaching, students must develop interest in learning English. So it is a must that, the teacher should induce the interest and make the student to involve more in learning English. In this case, an effective teacher requires imagination and creativity to turn those negative perceptions around. Humour can be used as a teaching tool for the same purpose as it is true that, life without humour is boring likewise class is boring without humour.

Students of education should always be given the opportunity to observe the teaching style by using certain strategies, like humour, especially in the language teaching. The teacher should kindle the students to come forward with reasonable jokes, which help them to express their views without any hesitations in the classes. Thus, this paper focuses how humour can be used as an effective tool in teaching and in creating the effective English language in the classroom.