Communicative Language Teaching requires an environment of trust and mutual confidence wherein learners may interact without fear or threat of failure. When we laugh we learn better. The use of humour and fun makes the class atmosphere more pleasant, increases interaction among teacher and students, lowers the anxiety level, motivates learners, makes learning more enjoyable and meaningful, and, most of the time, pleases the students. Jokes and anecdotes could be a rich resource of all this and a lot more. This paper examines the idea of using jokes and anecdotes for the purposes of ELT and aims at demonstrating how it can fruitfully work in our EFL / ESL classrooms.

Communicative Language Teaching requires an environment of trust and mutual confidence wherein learners may interact without fear or threat of failure. When we laugh we learn better. The use of humour and fun makes the class atmosphere more pleasant, increases interaction among teacher and stude...