ASIAN EFL TEACHERS USE HUMOUR IN THE CLASSROOM A CASE STUDY OF VIETNAMESE EFL UNIVERSITY TEACHERS

ASIAN EFL TEACHERS USE HUMOUR IN THE CLASSROOM A CASE STUDY OF VIETNAMESE EFL UNIVERSITY TEACHERS Pham Nguyen Huy Hoang Ho Chi Minh City University of Education, Vietnam Email: huyhoang1607@gmail.com Eleni Petraki Assistant Professor, University of Canberra, Australia Email: Eleni.Petraki@canberra.edu.au Abstract. Despite the popular literature on the benefits of humour in making learners relaxed and helping them acquire knowledge more efficiently, empirical studies on humour in language teaching are limited. There is negligible research in teachers perceptions of the roles of humour in the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), especially in Asian classrooms which are reported to be structured and authoritative. This study examined university teachers perceptions of the roles of humour in EFL teaching, teachers practices of humour use, the reasons behind their use (or not use) of humour and teachers preferences regarding humour types in the context of an Asian developing country - Vietnam. An ethnographic qualitative approach was employed in this study, combining observations and interviews. The findings revealed that the majority of university EFL teachers agreed about the beneficial roles of humour in EFL teaching. All teachers used humour in their teaching, or claimed that they did so. The three most frequently used types of humour are humorous comments, jokes, and funny stories. The study concludes with recommendations for successful integration of humour in the language classroom. Keywords: Affective filter; Asian classroom; communicative language teaching; humour; language anxiety; language play; language teaching; Vietnamese classroom

1.Introduction There has been growing attention pointing to the importance of student-centred learning and humanistic education. In language learning and teaching, the communicative language teaching approach also advocates a supportive and anxiety free environment, respecting learners attitudes, motivations, anxieties, and achievements (Harmer, 2007). A classroom atmosphere which is relaxed and psychologically safe, which encourages risktaking, and provides the most teacher- and peer-support is desirable for raising learners motivation and self-confidence while reducing learner anxiety (Oxford, 1999). A range of strategies have been proposed to address these challenges comprising language play, language games, small group activities and humour. While there is proliferation of research on the majority of the strategies above, research on the use of classroom humour is scarce. The present study was one of the few studies examining empirically the use of humour in the Asian language classroom. The context which was chosen was the Vietnamese EFL context, which shares many challenges with other Asian contexts, such as time constraints in applying CLT in the classroom, crowded classrooms, focus on rote-learning, product oriented teaching and strictly authoritarian classrooms (Gorsuch, 2007; Nunan, 2003). In this context, humour would constitute a useful resource for improving the classroom atmosphere. By examining the use of humour in the Asian EFL classroom, we can unravel its applications and potential in language learning in many similar contexts. 2. Background for Research on Humour While there is an abundance of definitions of humour in dictionaries and books, it is important to present a definition of humour as employed in this research. Humour was defined as: teacher-initiated attempts to stimulate laughter or amusement. These attempts may come from the materials, the lesson content, or classroom interactions (e.g. students actions, or students responses to teachers questions), and will typically result in laughter or smiling. Other examples of humour, such as student initiated humour, were left to be explored in future research. A good number of writers have looked into the potential of humour in education and reported positive results. We will focus on presenting the findings of empirical studies, in which the benefits of humour in an educational context can be grouped into either (a) direct, i.e. humour helps increase students comprehension or retention of information, or

(b) indirect, i.e. humour contributes to the formation of an environment conducive to learning. In the category of direct benefits of humour on student learning, Kaplan & Pascoe s (1977) study and Desberg et al. s (1981) are among the earliest studies which investigated the role of humour through experimental research. Both studies suggested significantly greater retention of humorous information among subjects who had been exposed to humorous examples. Garner s (2006) study showed that the humour group had higher ratings for the item on their overall opinion of the lesson and could recall and retain more information regarding the topic. Ziv (1988) compared test results from two groups of undergraduate students in a onesemester course taught by a. a teacher using relevant humour and b. one not using humour. The result was that group learning with humour achieved higher test results. However in Fisher s (1997) study humour did not seem to have any improvement in retention of material. The result was attributed to the fact that the pacing of humour in the project was so fast, and the visitors were exposed to humour too often (p.711). This led to suggestions about the optimal use of humour in the classroom which can improve learning. In sum, most studies advocate the direct benefits of humour in education, except one that warns of the need to calculate the amount and frequency of humour incorporated into teaching (Fisher, 1997). The greater part of research into humour in education concerns its indirect benefits. Researchers following this direction have found that humour can: increase teacher immediacy and lessen psychological distance between teachers and students (Gorham, 1988; Gorham & Christophel, 1990), lower students affective filters (Maurice, 1988), create a safer, more open classroom environment (Askildson, 2005; MacAulay, 2009; Neuliep, 1991; Senior, 2001; White, 2001; Ziv, 1979), and lead to better ratings of teachers or teaching (Bryant, Crane, Comisky & Zillmann, 1980; Brown, Tomlin & Fortson, 1996; Garner, 2006; Lowman, 1994; Tamborini & Zillmann, 1981; Ziv, 1979). These studies have mainly used rating or frequency scales and questionnaires completed by students to assess the effects of humour in classroom settings. From the few empirical studies, we can cite Forman s (2011) who observed one EFL class of 31 students in Thailand taught by an Anglo-Australian whose use of humorous language play was reported to have created a warm, responsive atmosphere in this lesson,

with considerable smiling and laughter in evidence (p.560). Another study by Blyth & Ohyama (2011) employed a list of 60 riddle telling activities during English language lessons with 148 university students of English to test vocabulary acquisition. Using a pre-test/post-test design, the study revealed students improved vocabulary knowledge, improved vocabulary confidence and increased appreciation of humour among students. The conclusions drawn from the literature presented above suggest that humour is believed to have cognitive and affective benefits in the language classroom and can be an effective tool in lowering language anxiety and enhancing language learning. Humour is considered part of language play which has been the subject of previous research in language learning. The integration of humour and the development of a pleasant classroom climate are also advocated by Dornyei (2001) who considers them as motivational teaching strategies. However, research on humour is negligible and lacking especially in the Vietnamese context, the context of this study. This study adds to the limited number of studies on humour in EFL contexts both by following and improving on the ways research has been conducted previously. Previous research has mostly investigated either teachers reasons for using humour or students perceptions of teacher s use of humour employing ranking questionnaire items. This study employs interviews to obtain detailed accounts of teachers perceptions and reflections on the teachers use of humour and observations to identify the extent of humour use in the language classroom. It also extends the research on perceptions of humour in the classroom by examining the types of humour preferred by teachers and how they are used in the classroom, which has not been the subject of previous studies. This study has significant contribution to language teaching as it investigates humour as a novel element and a useful resource for teachers in a communicative language classroom. This study addressed the following research questions: To what extent do Vietnamese university EFL teachers use humour in classroom teaching? What are Vietnamese university EFL teachers perceptions of the role(s) of humour in classroom teaching? What types of humour do Vietnamese university EFL teachers use and in which contexts? 3. Research Design The study was conducted in a large city of

Vietnam. Data were obtained from thirty EFL teachers working in three different universities, to increase the generalizability of the findings. The university context was chosen as it was expected it would be an appropriate context to integrate humour, given that students English proficiency would be at pre-intermediate to intermediate level. All teacher participants had a BA degree in English teaching from a Vietnamese university, and most of them had an MA in TESOL degree from either a Vietnamese or a foreign (mainly Australian, American, or British) university. The teachers were both male and female, with ages ranging from early twenties to early fifties, and years of teaching experience ranging from two to twenty-five. The observed lessons consisted of lessons taught to students majoring in English as well as lessons in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) or Academic Purposes (EAP) including a range of disciplines. The project received ethics approval to conduct the data collection. This study employed an ethnographic qualitative approach to elicit teachers perceptions of the role of humour in the language classroom (Creswell, 2008). This was appropriate as the majority of previous studies investigating students perceptions of the roles of humour mainly employed surveys. The combination of interviews and observations allowed a more comprehensive exploration of the phenomenon of humour in the classroom and encouraged participants explanations on the use of humour in the classroom. In total, 30 classes were observed, run by 30 different teachers who later participated in a semi-structured interview. It was agreed that 27 out of 30 teacher participants would have their lessons video-recorded; the remaining 3 asked that the researcher use field notes only. With each teacher, there were two separate observation sessions: a pilot session and an official session one week later. Only the official session was video-recorded. Video recording which can capture individuals, their voices, movements and mannerisms (Basit, 2010, p.134) was deemed necessary to capture all instances and aspects of humour and reactions to it in class, since humour in this study included physical and visual humour as well as verbal humour, and the indicators of amusement could include nonverbal and/or inaudible ones such as bodily gestures or movement besides laughter. A semi-structured type of interview was employed in this study (Bryman, 2008; Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009), as this would elicit in depth responses from teachers and enable the

researcher to address the research questions. The interview questions focused on exploring teachers perceptions of the roles of humour in the classroom, their preferences of types of humour and their recommendations about appropriate integration of humour in the classroom. 4. Findings 4.1. Observational findings An in-depth analysis of video recordings combined with field notes revealed that the majority of the teachers in this study made efforts to use humour during their EFL lessons. There were 7 teachers who used none or virtually no humour during the observed lessons: 2 male teachers and 5 female teachers. The remaining twenty three out of thirty teachers employed humour during the observed lesson: 8 males and 15 females. T16 had the highest number of attempts at humour (eighteen times), while the lowest number (one time) belonged to T29. The mean number of attempts at humour from teachers using humour was 7.13 per class session, which on average lasted 90 minutes. This frequency of humour was higher than the mean number of jokes per lecture found by Bryant et al. (1980), which was 3.34, and the optimal dose of humour suggested by Ziv (1988, p.13), which was three to four instances per hour. Humour was used throughout the class time, but most frequently at the beginning as an icebreaker to set a relaxing mood for the lesson, and at the end of the lesson to rejuvenate students after they might have been worn out with their study. The most commonly used type of humour in the observed lessons was humorous comments. The comments could be on anything related to the lesson, the class, and/or the classroom: lesson content, students, teachers, students actions, students responses, classroom equipment, and such like. Other common types of humour included funny stories, funny examples, jokes, and funny pictures. However, based on detailed observational notes, it could be argued that a teacher s personality and the lesson topic seemed to affect the amount of humour used in the lessons, if any. There were teachers with an easygoing personality, who liked to smile and joke with students. Much more humour was used in these teachers lessons, compared to the lessons taught by the more serious type teachers. The effect of personality on a teacher s humour was confirmed in their responses in the interviews with the researcher. More importantly, a lesson s topic or the course itself seemed to have a great impact on the employment of humour. Dry

courses (T17 s term) like Business Translation, Phonetics and Phonology, or Literature generally seemed to reserve very little space for humour, while others like Speaking or British and American Culture allowed more light hearted activities. 4.2. Interview findings A notable common feature among teachers who did not use humour during observed lessons was that, when asked if they used humour in their teaching, all of them claimed that they did, at least sometimes, and that they usually received positive reactions towards their humour from students. Most teachers believed that the main obstacle for the lack of humour during the observed lesson lay in the nature of the unit they taught. Despite the absence of humour in the observed lesson, these teachers recognised the important role of humour: they believed that students wanted their teachers to use humour while teaching. Explaining this belief, T24 said, because if a teacher doesn t use humour, the class will be very boring and they [students] don t want to study. For the teachers who employed humour in the classroom their responses were also positive. Detailed discussions with the teachers revealed that humour was used at two different points in the lesson: at the beginning or during the lesson. At the beginning of the lesson, the purpose was considered to be to draw students attention and lead into the lesson in an exciting way. As T3 mentions, At the very beginning of the class, students looked tired and sleepy, and I wanted to create a comfortable and cheerful environment. (T3) During the lesson, the purposes of teachers humour could be to regain students attention, to explain a point, to encourage students to answer more confidently or participate more actively, or to make the atmosphere more relaxing. Sometimes when you talk about business content all the time, it s so boring. Then I use a joke, and they pay attention. (T2) The remaining interview questions were identical for all teachers and thus presented together. Talking about the overall purposes of their humour, most teachers mentioned these two: to make students relaxed and to help them learn more efficiently. Many teachers believed that these two purposes were interrelated, i.e. when students were relaxed, they could learn better. All the teachers also identified several positive effects of integrating humour in the classroom. These included: improving the teacher-student relationship, helping students improve their concentration and learn better, increasing their motivation to learn,

encouraging more interaction and participation, and making the class comfortable. Some teachers went even further to say that using humorous material assisted in motivating the teachers themselves. T27 comments: Students, especially Asian students, tend to be shy. So, if you have humour, maybe they ll feel more relaxed and they ll get involved more in the lesson. They ll forget their shyness. (T27) With regards to the types of humour teachers used and preferred using, 70% of the teachers said they preferred spontaneous humour, 17% liked both, and 13% preferred prepared humour. Unprepared humour included humorous comments, exaggerated facial expressions, and funny sounds or gestures. The teachers who preferred spontaneous humour believed that it was more natural to pick up the fun on the spot, it was difficult to prepare a joke (T3), or they were confident of their ability to use humour. As T2 explains: You can prepare for everything but the mood of the class. You may look at the class and realize that you can t use the prepared ones. (T2) On the other hand, teachers who preferred prepared humour thought that it would be safer to have something up their sleeves (T18) and it gave them more control over what happened in class, or it was simply their character that called for preparation. The most preferred type of humour amongst both categories of teachers was humorous comments, which was chosen by 65% of teachers. Humorous comments were closely followed by jokes chosen by 57%. At the third place were funny stories chosen by 52% of participants. According to the teachers, a funny story was typically longer than a joke, and did not require a punch line at the end which probably made it easier for students to follow and to enjoy than a joke. Other types of humour mentioned in teachers responses included physical humour (43%), visual humour (35%), pun/riddle (17%), and funny examples, non-threatening threat and the general related humour (4% each). Humorous comments and funny jokes also featured frequently in the observations thus confirming they were amongst teachers preferred responses. An example illustrating the use of a funny joke in the classroom was made by T5 who used a crab joke to teach the word serve. The class was working on some vocabulary to prepare for a reading lesson. The teacher was arriving at teaching to serve to students. She told the following joke to the class:

T5: OK, everybody. I will tell you this story: One day, I was sitting in a restaurant; then a man came in and asked the waiter, Do you serve crabs here? ; and the waiter said, We serve everyone, sir. Please take a seat. Some students understood and laughed right away. Some others needed some time to get the point. Then T5 asked students to identify the two possible meanings and combinations of to serve. The above example created a humorous and relaxing atmosphere where both students and teacher could share the joke, and learn about the word crab and serve in a humorous environment. The teacher s story initially was followed by silence, but continued with students contribution to the definition and learning of the word serve. It not only offered opportunities for engagement and sharing in the joke but also engendered further joking from the students. The teachers summarised the meaning of both words included in the joke, which then prompted further jokes about the students present. The injection of the funny story in this instance, caught the students attention, fostered student communication, encouraged intercultural awareness and provided a break for the students. 5. Discussion This research explored the humorous side of teachers in an Asian classroom, which has been described as typically authoritative and one that lacks interaction. This is the first research, to the researchers knowledge, that discusses in detail teachers experiences and opinions about humour combined with their practices, teachers preferences of types of humour and, teachers purposes for using humour in the Vietnamese language classroom. With regards to the extent of humour use in the Asian university EFL classroom, it was revealed that humour played a significant role in the classroom. More than 76% (23 out of 30) teachers made explicit attempts to use humour while the remaining seven teachers claimed during the interviews that they did use humour in their teaching, at least occasionally, depending on the context. This suggests the high regard teachers placed on the role of humour in the classroom. It was observed that there was a high frequency of humour in these classrooms compared to previous studies, which can be explained by the fact that they were small classes, of up to 30 students. Taking into account the fact that Bryant et al. (1980) and Ziv (1988) studied college classes carried out in lecture halls with many more students (up

to hundreds), it is likely there were more interactions between teachers and students in the present study, thus creating more chances for humour to appear. Another reason for the increased use of humour may be teachers perceptions of its beneficial role (Borg, 2006). Second, the nature of a foreign language class is different from that of most other classes in that the language is both the content to be learnt and the means of instruction, while only the latter is the role of a language in a class of another subject. Humour could have been a conscious effort from the teachers to teach the language itself besides being used to create an environment conducive to learning, as seen in the example of the crab joke. Finally, the university setting may be an appealing context in which to use humour compared to high school or private classes, as students are more independent and there is flexibility in the way classes are conducted. In addition, as the Communicative Approach is being encouraged in Vietnam, more and more EFL teachers are acknowledging the importance of emotional support for students. With regards to the second research question, there was an overwhelming consensus about the beneficial functions of humour. The positive roles of humour mentioned by teachers in this study fall into similar categories to what is reported in the general literature (see Berk, 1996; Bruner, 2002; Garner, 2006 for example): benefitting the learning environment (affective roles) and improving students learning (cognitive roles). The most frequently mentioned affective benefit of humour was that it helped to create a relaxing atmosphere in the classroom, thus making students more likely to be open, more motivated, more interactive with teachers and fellow students, and to learn better. Other benefits in the affective category included shortening the distance between teachers and students, making students more interested in teachers and classes, and helping teachers themselves to feel involved in the class and the lessons. These teachers supported the suggestions about the benefits of humour reported in the literature by Bryant et al. (1980), Gorham & Christophel (1990), or Powell & Andresen (1985). In the second category, namely the cognitive roles of humour, the teachers responses also tallied with the roles played by humour identified in the popular literature about humour: it can possibly help students understand the lesson more easily (Berk, 1996; Lucas, 2005), and to remember points longer (Garner, 2006; Kaplan & Pascoe, 1977).

A noteworthy finding of this study and which has not been discussed in previous research on humour was the argument that humour can play a fundamental role in language learning, increase students vocabulary and grammar and enhancing students sociolinguistic and intercultural competence. It expands students intercultural awareness, understanding of metaphorical use of language, pragmatic understanding which form a central part of communicative competence (Davies, 2003). The types of humour that teachers in this study used were diverse. This is another distinctive contribution of the present research. The first type was prepared humour, included in Powerpoint presentations and lesson plans, and unprepared humour. Humorous comments featured as the most preferred type of humour amongst all teachers and were used to lighten the atmosphere and increase teachers immediacy by showing their human side (Gorham & Christophel, 1990), or to soften teachers criticism. More importantly, such comments could also be seen as face-saving devices in such a facethreatening context as the foreign language classroom. Being spontaneous, humorous comments occurred throughout the lessons rather than during certain portions of them. Previous literature has not reported any use of this type of humorous comments. The fact that this possibly risky type of humour featured high in teachers preferences in this study suggests that either they were quite confident with their management of humour or, the relationships between them and their students were good enough not to be afraid of possible damage caused by inappropriate comments. Teachers experiences of effective and ineffective instances of humour in their teaching pointed to suggestions for humour to be successful. First and foremost, humour, especially jokes or funny stories, should be related to the lesson, otherwise, they might be seen as a waste of precious learning time which resembles Steele s (1998) and Sudol s (1981) warnings of the possible distraction caused by content-irrelevant humour in a classroom setting. Secondly, humour content and language should be appropriate to students levels, personalities or ages. This also includes avoiding taboo topics especially in the Vietnamese context, humour about sex, politics, religions, and regional differences. Thirdly, it is advisable that teachers build good relationships and mutual trust with students, so that their humour would be more likely to be welcome and failure, if any,

would cause less damage. This aligns with comments made by Gorham & Christophel (1990), Hanh (2007) and Harmer (2007). Fourthly, humour should not be used as a form of criticism, no matter whether against an individual student, a group of students, departments, schools, or society in general. Some teachers believed that the sense of humour was not inborn, but could be trained which was in line with the arguments of such advocates of humour in teaching as Medgyes (2002), Morrison (2008), and Tamblyn (2003). Many teachers recommended humour material in teacher training or workshops to offer opportunities for teachers who were not confident to gain useful strategies in integrating humour in the classroom successfully. 6. Conclusion It is important to acknowledge some limitations in this study. The study was conducted in a tertiary EFL setting and thus the results may be applicable to this context. A larger sample of participants from suburban and rural areas could be employed to further validate the findings of this research. Future research could study the use and applicability of humour in other settings, including high schools primary schools, urban and rural areas. Another important avenue for research could be examination of the development of teachers use of humour over time, and in different educational contexts. Despite its limitations, the study recognised humour as a key ingredient in the language learning classroom which generated a positive classroom atmosphere and assisted language learning. As Singh and Richards (2006, p. 5) very succinctly put it, before learning, there must be engagement, and this consists of the atmosphere and the climate of course room life (Wright, 2005) and which humour can play a vital role. References Askildson, L. (2005). Effects of humor in the language classroom: humor as a pedagogical tool in theory and practice. Arizona Working Papers in SLAT, 12, 45-61. Basit, T. N. (2010). Conducting Research in Educational Contexts. London: Continuum. Berk, R. A. (1996). Student ratings of 10 strategies for using humor in college teaching. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 7(3) 71-92. Blyth, A. & Ohyama, T. (2011). Using humour in EFL classes. In A. Stewart (Ed.), JALT2010 Conference Proceedings (pp. 735-745). Tokyo: JALT. Borg, S. (2006). Teacher cognition and language education. London: Continuum.

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