An investigation on the types of humour in English language teaching among Malaysian lecturers in higher education

Humour in English Language Teaching (ELT) is known to be beneficial for both the educators and students. However, the literature addressing the types of humour used by Malaysian lecturers in higher education on this matter are yet to be explored. To address these issues, the study focusses to explore on the types of humour used in ELT by Malaysian lecturers in relation to the four types of humour: verbal, visual, auditory and figural humour. The research design is a qualitative study which implements two instruments; classroom observation and semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis will be used to analyse the data. The results from the study show that there are three types of humour commonly used: verbal humour, visual humour and auditory humour. The data analysis indicates that there are four factors which influence the types of humour used in the classroom: humour used for content delivery, humour to build rapport, humour to attract attention and humour to instil discipline.