Abstract:

This study aims to investigate the functions of humor in reducing junior high school English classroom anxiety. The writer aims to research whether using humor is suitable to relieve junior high school students’ anxiety in English classroom and how to use humor to solve the problem by studying the cause and form of English classroom anxiety. Researches show that using humor in teaching process will relieve students’ anxiety to some degree, so teachers should teach English with arousing the students’ interest to decrease students’ psychological pressure, letting the students experience the joy of learning English in relaxing atmosphere in order to reach the goal of improving the students’ ability. In this case, the introduction of humor into class is an effective means to arrive at the target.

Key words: humor; English classroom; anxiety

摘要：

本研究旨在探讨幽默对缓减初中生英语课堂焦虑的作用。笔者通过对学生在英语课堂中产生焦虑的原因和焦虑形式的分析来探讨使用幽默缓解初中学生英语课堂焦虑是否合适以及如何使用幽默来解决这个问题。研究表明，幽默在一定程度上能有效缓解学生的课堂焦虑，所以老师应该以激发学生兴趣为目的来进行英语教学，减少学生的心理压力，让学生在轻松的氛围中体验学习英语的乐趣，以达到提高学生学习能力的目标。因此，将幽默带入英语课堂是到达目标的有效手段。

关键词：幽默； 英语课堂； 焦虑

1. Introduction
True Herb, an American psychologist, once said that, humor is one of the most interesting, the most impressive, and the most common type of art. From the psychological point of view, humor is a kind of behavior characteristics，which can stimulate people and create joy, happiness, and relaxation. English is a subject which is predominantly focused on memory discipline, and English lesson is boring, so teachers can use humorous language or make humorous behavior in English teaching skillfully to stimulate students' interest in learning with humor. And a lot of conclusions of foreign and inland researches prove that using humor teaching in English class is taken as an effective way to relieve students’ foreign language anxiety. It is said in many literatures that humor can create a harmonious atmosphere, can inspire students’ interest, and can also fill the gap between students and teachers. So a good sense of humor is an important quality of an excellent teacher; and we need humor in English class.