TRIGGERING MEANINGFUL LAUGHTERS IN THE CLASSROOM TO FOSTER LEARNING: BRIDGING TEACHER-STUDENT GAPS

Abstract

In contemporary education, students' well-being and learning outcomes are equally important. In response to this, the notion of humor integration into language classrooms has increasingly gained attention among researchers and educators. As a potential pedagogical tool, humor has been reported to offer outstanding values in the learning process from different perspectives, particularly cognitive and psychological ones. However, there are still controversies in this field, and appreciating humor is still a matter of culture and context. This paper investigates the appreciation of different humor strategies adopted in Vietnamese English Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms from both teachers' and learners' perspectives. A quantitative method was conducted, including a survey, with an open-ended question, of 207 undergraduates and 30 lecturers. After the process of data analysis using descriptive statistics, the results showed valuable insights into the favorite humor strategies in the classrooms and revealed some existing gaps between teachers' viewpoints and students' expectations toward the matter. It also suggested valuable implications in humor adoption in the Vietnamese ELT context amidst the 21st-century era.