Investigating The Use Of Humour In The Efl Class To Maintain Student Teahcer Rapport

Résumé: Many EFL classrooms suffer from turbulent relationships and a stressful learning-teaching atmosphere. This unsettled learning environment has negative effects on students' outcomes and performance. Hence, teachers are found struggling to find innovative ways to deal with this kind of problems. The current study aims at investigating the use of humour in EFL classes and its effect on the maintenance of student-teacher rapport. We hypothesized that humour is to some extent used in EFL classes, and that both EFL teachers and students would have positive attitudes towards the use of humour to maintain students-teacher rapport. In order to realize the aim of the study and to test the validity of the hypotheses, a descriptive method was resorted to using two different research tools, the questionnaire and a classroom observation. Thirty-two (32) teachers and seventy (70) LMD students at the Department of English, University of Oum El Bouaghi, participated in this study. Two questionnaires were administered to both teachers and students during the academic year 2017-2018, and six teachers permitted the conduct of classroom observation which lasted for a month. The results of the present study have shown that both teachers and students regard humour as an effective pedagogical strategy that has an effect on building student-teacher rapport and establishing an enjoyable atmosphere conducive to learning. Consequently, the results obtained confirm the research hypotheses.

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