The past two decades have seen a growing interest in the role of humor and play in second-language (L2) learning and teaching. Drawing on the methods of conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics, researchers have sought to understand how teachers and students "do" humor and play, what functions humor and play serve,…

Humor in teaching can promote a positive and cohesive class atmosphere but can also have unintended negative results if the teacher does not first develop a supportive relationship with the students. (Author)

Uses research findings to show when educational leaders can use humor to increase their effectiveness and how they can use it more effectively. (FL)

Reviews the literature for empirical support of the use of humor in classroom teaching. Concludes that the judicious use of humor by a teacher can facilitate student learning, and offers guidelines for its use. (FMW)

A review of the educational research on humor use will answer many questions about how it works in the classroom. Humor can be classified in three ways, each with its own primary function: superiority theory--sociological function; relief theory--psychological function; and incongruity theory--intellectual function. Classes filled with relevant…

Noting that while laboratory investigations of recordings of children's spontaneous verbal creations or repetitions of traditional forms in their natural play habitats have indicated that they do engage in systematic explorations of language structures in their play, this paper points out that there have been no investigations of whether such…

Examination of specific role of humor in college classroom and its effect on learning and communicative climate highlights academic classroom instruction, objectives of academic bibliographic instruction, positive learning environment and bibliographic instruction classroom, prevalence of humor in college classroom, and how classroom humor affects…