A Research On The Characteristics Of Children’s Humor And Its Application In The Context Of English Teaching

The main objective of this study is to explore the humorous characteristics of6to8years old children in English teaching situations, design humorous classes according tochildren’s humorous characteristics in English teaching situations, and explore the impactof humorous English classes.Research one refers to the research method of Zhang Yifei(2006), Chen Qiaomei andJian Shuzhen(2011). First of all, collect the6to8years old children’s150pieces ofhumorous performance in three times-English teaching classes, class games, class breaksthrough observation method. Then code and classify the abundant children’s humorousperformance, so as to get the children’s humorous characteristics under the Englishteaching situation:(1)Inspiration: the children get knowledge and inspiration in thehumorous interactions with teachers;(2)Tendentiousness: the children’s humorousperformance points to the gender differences between boys and girls;(3) Resourcefulness:children take the form of improvisation to generate new humorous performance;(4)Performabilty: In order to attract other people, children imitate different kinds of humorousbehaviours in an exaggerated way;(5)Implicitness: Children melt embarrassing, unpleasantemotional experience away in a humorous way;(6)Contagion: the phenomenon thatchildren all join in together to imitate a certain kind of humorous behavior;(7)Competitiveness: children’s humorous performance is used to compare with others andthey hope to get superiority;(8)Other characteristics: children’s humorous performance thatcannot be classified into any of the above mentioned categories.Research2designs a humorous English class aimed at children at the age of6to8with the theme of "My Favourite Animal" based on the analysis and discussion ofchildren’s humorous characteristic. In addition, it refers to the general English class withouthumorous design and assesses the effects of humorous English class from the twodimensions of emotion and cognition, among which, emotional dimension is divided intothree levels: the extent of children’s favor of teachers, the extent of children’s favor of classmates, the extent of children’s favor of English, and cognitive dimension is dividedinto three levels of listening, expressing and memorizing. The findings of research twoshow that humorous English teaching has distinct advantage in terms of six levels: theextent that children like the teachers, their classmates and English, listening, expressionand memorization, compared with general English teaching. Thus, humorous Englishclasses can provide better language environment in both emotional and cognitivedimensions for the students.