Humor in language teaching

Abstract: In this article, we argue that humor, namely in jokes, helps teaching Spanish to Brazilian students. Therefore, we show some arguments establishing how humor is important for teaching and learning. Then, we show how relevance theory (SPERBER; WILSON, 1986, 1995) can help us to understand how people understand jokes. Next, we argue that the teacher must to anticipate possible student's translations in order to use jokes appropriately in class. Finally, we analyze three jokes based on the Yus’ (2010) classification. We conclude that the students will comprehend more easily transferable jokes than replaceable and the challenging ones.