Is Humor an Appreciated Teaching Tool? Perceptions of Professors' Teaching Styles and Use of Humor

Torok, Sarah E.; McMorris, Robert F.; Lin, Wen‐Chi

doi:10.3200/ctch.52.1.14-20

Cited by 149 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…According to the data in Table 5, it is possible to use humor in order to improve the communication skills of the students, to enable them to socialize, and to overcome their fears and concerns. Humor has helped to humanize, illustrate, defuse, (Torok et al, 2004). The results of research performed by Hackman et al (1993) coincide with the results obtained from this study.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

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The views of Turkish teachers on the use of humor in secondary schools

Kilic¹

2016

Educ. Res. Rev.

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Humor is the type of expression and writing representing the humorous aspect of life by adorning with jokes and wit. The main objective of humor is to criticize, ironize, and correct the flaws and hideousness in life. Humor develops the sensitivity, the empathizing ability and social facts' multidimensional perception of individuals. Humor enlivens life, entertains people, positively contributes to social relationships, and improves the imagination of individuals. This research has been conducted in order to determine the usage level of humor by secondary school Turkish teachers, and their attitudes and opinions regarding humor. The attitude scale prepared for the research was given to 128 Turkish teachers in total. The data obtained from the results of the research was interpreted by calculating its percentages, frequencies, arithmetical means and standard deviations. In order to determine the differences in the sample group's responses -for the attitude scale-as per their genders, the "independent sample t test" was applied and interpreted. And in order to determine the differences of the subject's responses -for the articles of survey-as per their seniority in their profession, the "one way ANOVA" test was applied and interpreted. According to the results of this research, humor may be used as an effective form of communication and socialization tool. Through humor, the learning environment may be made more attractive, and the linguistic skills and vocabulary of the students may be enriched. It is possible to use humor in order to motivate the students for the course, to make the course more interesting, to increase the academic success of the students, and to improve the solution generation skills of the students. As per the results of the research, it was determined that there was no significant difference among the opinions of teachers -regarding the use of humor in secondary school Turkish courses-in respect of their seniority in the profession. In the same manner, it was determined that there was no significant difference among the opinions of the teachers -regarding the use of humor in secondary school Turkish courses-in respect of gender variables, and that the humorous items used in the Turkish textbooks are wholly insufficient.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…This supports the results obtained from the research study entitled "Is Humor an Appreciated Teaching Tool? Perceptions of Professors' teaching Styles and use of Humor" (Torok et al, 2004).…”

Section: Teachers' Opinions Regarding Humor Usage In Turkish Lessonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The views of Turkish teachers on the use of humor in secondary schools

Kilic¹

2016

Educ. Res. Rev.

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“…Past research has looked at opinions related to using humorin the classroom (Minchew and Hopper 2008;Torok, McMorris and Lin 2004) and what positive effects such humor may have on learning in general (Gorham and Christophel 1990), on student anxiety (Golchi and Jamali 2011)and on class atmosphere (Aboudan 2009) for example. It has recently been recommended as not only a good way to aid communicative language learning, but also for different areas of language learning such as singing songs (Rafiee, Kassaian and Dastjerdi 2010) orteaching reading (Hayati, Shooshtari and Shakeri 2011).…”

Section: Proposed Benefits Of Humor-usagementioning

confidence: 99%

The Laughing EFL Classroom: Potential Benefits and Barriers

Stroud¹

2013

ELT

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The use of humor in EFL across the world has been widely discussed as an effective way to create a more comfortable, productive classroom environment in language learning. However, student-perceived benefits of both teacher and student-produced humor in the more specific context of a Japaneselanguage classroom have not been explored in any great detail. Two surveys of 104 Japanese high school students and a set of interviews revealedas expected positive feedback on general classroom humor usage, with noticeable positive effects perceived as improvements in retention, willingness to participation, enjoyment in learning and classroom atmosphere, as well as a lowering of anxiety.However, regardless of thisclear preference for humor inclusion in learning, several potential barriers were identified to help offer reasons why some students may not wish to use humor in class themselves. These included teacher disapproval, student confidence issues and language problems with being humorous in the L2. This study concludes with a suggested ten-step guideline for teachersto follow to harness humor as a potential catalyst for learningfor differing classes, based on this report's findings.

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“…As noted in Section 1, the lack of a unique, fully-differentiated taxonomy of fun modalities makes it difficult to compare responses and results across people or studies. For example, Torok, McMorris, and Lin (2004) include Cartoon, Joke, Pun, Riddle as separate items on a list of "types of humor," while our study lists Jokes/Humor and Cartoons as separate modalities and would count puns and riddles in the Jokes/Humor modality.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Fun in the Statistics Classroom: An Exploratory Study of College Instructors' Hesitations and Motivations

Lesser

Wall

Carver

et al. 2013

Journal of Statistics Education

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This study examines statistics instructors' use of fun as well as their motivations, hesitations, and awareness of resources. In 2011, a survey was administered to attendees at a national statistics education conference, and follow-up qualitative interviews were conducted with 16 of those (N = 249) surveyed to provide further context for interpreting the quantitative results. Motivations were similar for men and women, but female instructors admitted more hesitations in many areas. While many instructors are using or are open to using fun in the statistics classroom, the findings suggest that not having available resources at hand and not being aware of resources such as the CAUSEweb collection are major hesitations. Methods of alleviating hesitations are discussed.

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Is Humor an Appreciated Teaching Tool? Perceptions of Professors' Teaching Styles and Use of Humor

Cited by 149 publications

References 19 publications

The views of Turkish teachers on the use of humor in secondary schools

The views of Turkish teachers on the use of humor in secondary schools

The Laughing EFL Classroom: Potential Benefits and Barriers

Using Fun in the Statistics Classroom: An Exploratory Study of College Instructors' Hesitations and Motivations

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