The purpose of this article is to examine the literature on teaching statistics for useful ideas that teachers of language testing courses can draw on and incorporate into their teaching toolkits as they see fit. To those ends, the article addresses eight questions: What is known generally about teaching statistics? Why are students so anxious…

Two experiments concerning the effects of humor on learning in higher education are presented. The first experiment involved 161 Israeli college students; the second involved 132 Israeli college students. Groups taught with the aid of humor performed significantly better on examinations than did those taught without humor. (TJH)

Humor is an excellent teaching tool because, in addition to preventing classroom boredom and monotony, it introduces lateral aspects of language such as irony, sarcasm, mockery, elision, ellipsis, and euphemism. Humor in language can be approached interactively or structurally through a variety of activities. It can be used to expand vocabulary,…