Introduction main Body Clarification of terms and aims of stories

Benefits and challenges of using stories in teaching:
There are costs and benefits any time an instructor modifies a course or adopts a new teaching method.
Incorporating stories into your teaching is no exception.
Possible learning objectives for using stories to teach.
Learning Objectives
_ Entertain or capture student attention
_ Engage students using elements of surprise or awe
_ Personalize instructor, enhance classroom atmosphere, and/or
reduce stress and anxiety
_ Personalize content and facilitate understanding
_ Associate a concept or theme to a memorable story
_ Facilitate problem-solving
_ Provide vocational or professional training
_ Communicate facts in a more accessible way
_ Connect a broad range of concepts
_ Represent exceptional, underrepresented, or unique perspectives
_ Present a problem or dilemma (e.g., ethical, moral, personal, cultural)
Challenges vary depending on the story used, how it is used, and its relationship to course content. First, to
ensure a story has pedagogical utility, it should have a clear objective, of which there could be many (Table 3).
Is it meant to entertain, connect to a broader trend or concept, create an engaging element of surprise, or provide a problem-solving opportunity? Failing to consider
a story’s objective does not rule out a story being beneficial, but it likely increases the risk it is ineffective. Students may become disengaged and perceive the story as being an invaluable use of time. Similarly, what if a chosen story has an objective but is just plain boring? As with a story that is poorly linked to its objective, the potential problem is that the stories might seem irrelevant and disconnected from the course material. As a
consequence, students can become disengaged and lose the ability to make meaningful connections to the material. Here communication with students and assessment of the efficacy of the story becomes important. Considering a story’s objective also does not rule out the possibility that it meets additional objectives, or even has unanticipated benefits. For example, an instructor might share a story that illustrates how to solve a problem (primary objective), yet in that story, students might also see a character in conflict (secondary objective) and an instructor with a sense of humor (unintended benefit). Of the many objectives that stories can have, they can be useful in presenting a problem or dilemma, be it ethical, moral, personal, or cultural. Often this is a benefit, as it allows us to identify and empathize with heroic characters and identify with their strengths and failings. But what if the character is one with whom we do not want our students to empathize? Given our inherent tendency to see a story through a character’s perspective, instructors
should be aware that stories can create sympathy and empathy with amoral/immoral characters. In these
instances it may be useful to provide ample opportunityfor discussion and critique.Another potential concern with story choice occurs when the story’s objective is to demonstrate a broader trend or concept. Suppose an economics instructor uses a story about an immigrant worker to discuss concepts⁸
on American capitalism, or a physiology instructor chooses a story about an elderly woman to discuss the physiology of osteoporosis. Effectively, these stories represent a single data point, but they are being used to represent broader, more complicated concepts. ⁹In such situations, there is a risk of “story bias.” Story bias implies that a single story may be unrepresentative of broader trends, relationships, concepts, or populations the story is mean to represent. While not a problem in itself, story bias could be problematic in professional training. For example, if an instructor uses a story to represent common practitioner behavior but then shares a story that depicts unusual or exceptional practice, trainees might be misled or confused. This concern
can be offset by explaining to students the broader trends or relationships and urging caution in drawing
conclusions from a single anecdote or story. Generally speaking, it is useful to stress caution in drawing conclusions regardless of whether story bias is a concern. Students are likely to derive conclusions or make inferences from any story. Boyd discusses how our brains are so predisposed toward interpreting stories that we do not patiently wait for additional information before drawing conclusions. Rather, we derive conclusions and inferences from incomplete information. If these conclusions and inferences are incorrect, they could conflict with the instructor’s true intent of the story. One way to ameliorate this potential issue is to leave time for follow up discussion and analysis, asking students to articulate the issues raised by a story. Hopefully, the instructor can then immediately correct any potential misconceptions. Finally, one inevitable cost with using stories in the classroom is that an instructor will have to part with one of their most precious and limited commodities: their time. While the methods I have suggested differ in the time required for their use, some time investment in and out of class is necessary, just as it is with any course modification
or adoption of a new teaching method. Some might argue that time spent on a story during class is time that could be better spent on more factual content or teaching students how to think more critically. Lordly and Kitson mention how others have raised such concerns. But this is a false dichotomy, because there is no inherent tradeoff between the effectiveness of time spent on a story and time spent on content;
stories can be useful to convey factual content , and they certainly facilitate learning. Furthermore, many of the challenges that
Table 3. Possible learning objectives for using stories to teach.
Learning Objectives¹⁰
_ Entertain or capture student attention
_ Engage students using elements of surprise or awe
_ Personalize instructor, enhance classroom atmosphere, and/or reduce stress and anxiety¹¹
_ Personalize content and facilitate understanding
_ Associate a concept or theme to a memorable story
_ Facilitate problem-solving
_ Provide vocational or professional training
_ Communicate facts in a more accessible way
_ Connect a broad range of concepts
_ Represent exceptional, underrepresented, or unique perspectives
_ Present a problem or dilemma (e.g., ethical, moral, personal, cultural)

come from using stories can be avoided or mitigated with on going assessment. For any assessment to be effective, it must align with the story’s objective . If the objective is simple, such as to entertain or personalize the instructor, assessment might come in the form of a simple, Like r t-style survey of student

opinion. If the goal is to represent a unique perspective, assessment might come from assigning a brief reflective essay. Or if the objective is to facilitate problem-solving, the instructor might give students the opportunity to apply their skills to a novel problem. In my own classes I have
used stories as links to certain concepts and themes. I assessed this link at the end of the semester by giving students a list of character names and their predicaments, and asked them to recall the concept or theme to which it was linked. In addition to assessment, challenges are ameliorated further by a suite of benefits. The most immediate benefit of using stories in the classroom comes from the fact that, as discussed in the
introduction, we are predisposed to remember stories rather than facts, concepts, relationships and theories.
When we use stories to teach, we are shaping our teaching methods to work with our cognitive predispositions
rather than attempting the opposite. Stories are concrete and specific rather than a generalization or an abstraction. Therefore, tying stories to what we really want students to learn can facilitate learning. For example, Kelemen et al. describe how they used a picture storybook of a fictional character to successfully teach young children challenging concepts on evolutionary theory. Or recall how Wills was stimulated to create a history course based entirely on personal stories after discovering how students always remembered them, instead of the facts and concepts he was trying to teach. We all interpret our experiences as stories. Stories are part of our evolutionary history and define who we are . As Gottschall stated, “our mind was shaped for story, so it could be shaped by story.” Stories are inherently engaging, particularly when the elements of surprise, confusion, mystery, or shock are accentuated. For this reason, they can be beneficial in recapturing lost attention. They can interrupt a student’s usual way of thinking and provide an opportunity for them to assimilate new knowledge. The shock or surprise initiates an unconscious search for new associations, new ideas, or a new framework. Good stories are also inherently personal, emotional, and social enterprises. From detecting agency to stimulating our mirror neurons, we identify with the characters in a good story. Recall my example of Francis Crick’s letter to his 12-year-old son. We also identify with the storyteller. Recall how the brains of storyteller Another potential concern with story choice occurs when the story’s objective is to demonstrate a broader trend or concept. Suppose an economics instructor uses a story about an immigrant worker to discuss concepts on American capitalism, or a physiology instructor chooses a story about an elderly woman to discuss the physiology of osteoporosis. Effectively, these stories represent a single data point, but they are being used to represent broader, more complicated concepts. In such situations, there is a risk of “story bias.” Story bias implies that a single story may be unrepresentative of broader trends, relationships, concepts, or populations the story is meant to represent. While not a problem in itself, story bias could be problematic in professional training . For example, if an instructor uses a story to represent common practitioner behavior but
then shares a story that depicts unusual or exceptional practice, trainees might be misled or confused. This concern can be offset by explaining to students the broader trends or relationships and urging caution in drawing conclusions from a single anecdote or story. Generally speaking, it is useful to stress caution in drawing conclusions regardless of whether story bias is a concern. Students are likely to derive conclusions or make inferences from any story. Boyd discusses how our brains are so predisposed toward interpreting stories that we do not patiently wait for additional information before drawing conclusions. Rather, we derive conclusions and inferences from incomplete information. If these conclusions and inferences are incorrect, they could conflict with the instructor’s true intent of the story. One way to ameliorate this potential issue is to leave time for follow up discussion and analysis, asking students to articulate he issues raised by a story. Hopefully, the instructor can then immediately correct any potential misconceptions. Finally, one inevitable cost with using stories in the classroom is that an instructor will have to part with one of their most precious and limited commodities: their time. While the methods I have suggested differ in the time required for their use, some time investment in and out of class is necessary, just as it is with any course modification
or adoption of a new teaching method. Some might argue that time spent on a story during class is
time that could be better spent on more factual content or teaching students how to think more critically. Lordly and Kitson mention how others have raised such concerns. But this is a false dichotomy,
because there is no inherent tradeoff between the effectiveness of time spent on a story and time spent on content; stories can be useful to convey factual content, and they certainly facilitate learning.
Jokes in teaching English as a Foreign Language
The article reveals the idea that Jokes as the way of teaching can be used in various ways. The basis for every nation's humour lies in its historical, socio-cultural and linguistic background. In order to get to know a nation's sense of humour one is forced to search much deeper. The article assumes that Jokes can be modified into compositions, essays, translations, poems, pictures, dramas, role-plays, games, questions and answers etc. in order to make lessons both interesting and smart.
Children learn new languages very easily, almost too easily. Most adults find foreign languages quite difficult. They must toil and struggle and put in long hours of hard work to make even small gains in their ability in a new language. But a child seems to just pick it up out of thin air. 
To a child, it is all play and no work. And, to make it even more frustrating for the adult learner, the results of a child's language play are superior to the results of an adult's language struggle. It does not seem fair. Sometimes students do not feel self-confident speaking English. As Malinowsky says that a common complaint among teachers today is that «My students won't talk». To avoid the frustrations of a non-communicative conversation class, teachers should work at setting up the students for «real» communication». I keep on asking myself how can I promote that «real communication» and motivate students to listen and speak in English. I know I have to involve them in the dynamics of the class. As Abello Contesse points out: «Student-student interaction (also known technically as 'inter language talk') in small groups is thought to offer a number of advantages: it reduces the dominance of the teacher over the class, it promotes collaboration among learners, it offers a more comfortable, relaxed atmosphere, it enables the teacher to work more as facilitator or consultant, it can promote learner responsibility and autonomy.../... but its crucial advantage is that it can increase the quantity of student talking time (STT) in the classroom» Claire stresses the importance of humor: «The nature of the subject humor insures enthusiastic student involvement in in-class conversations. No other subject generates such lively participation, covering so many different linguistic skills. Maurice states that humor can easily be seen as a way of activating motivation and directing attention, but it can also be used in other events as well, from stimulating recall to eliciting performance and providing feedback. He further on argues saying that telling jokes is a specialized skill that few EFL learners really need; however, the sub skills that aid effective joke-telling can be important in other ways of communication. Students can profit from the language contained in jokes if we select them carefully and grade their level of difficulty. And several skills can be practiced: listening, speaking, and reading. As Valmaña Iribaren points out that at the end of the semester I realized that the students not only had improved their listening skills but also had learned to select jokes and read them to others appropriately and fittingly. Poljaveric summarizes her whole experience with jokes as teaching materials in her English classes: «The pupils learned without being aware of it. They had to think and react quickly, which is not easy. In a very few minutes they had to select what was important to include and to discard what wasn't. 
They had to concentrate on the vocabulary, grammar, etc., and they did it without tension or fear. It was a game, and, as we know, learning through games is spontaneous and natural» . Leal points out how jokes can be used during classes .
by making the students listen to and understand the punch line of the joke, by providing them with part of the joke and asking them for their own end. For example, we give them the following: « Girl: I was ill when the school play was performed. Did it have a happy ending? Boy: Or the student can choose the answer from three possible options (A, B or C),
8 Ways to Teach Classroom Jokes in English:
Jokes are a great way to lighten the atmosphere in your classroom and, when used appropriately, they can be a fun way to get students practicing their English.
Using jokes in your classroom will not only get your students laughing, they’ll keep them learning too.
Jokes are a great way to keep your students engaged and interested in learning English. They provide a vehicle for you to introduce different cultural aspects and scenarios. Plus, they’re great for giving students the opportunity to use English in a more real-world, everyday setting.
With jokes, students will still be learning how to use the English language, but will be removed from the dryness of grammar exercises and textbooks. They provide an excellent chance to practice intonation and pronunciation, and students will likely encounter a significant amount of new vocabulary too.
One of the best reasons to use jokes in the classroom is that they help students become aware of the subtleties of the language. They will see how some words have two or more meanings or how some words are homophones, like “red” and “read” in the riddle: What’s black and white and red all over?¹²
Do your students ever seem a little bored or sleepy?
As a teacher, there’s nothing more frightening than standing at the front of the class and having at a bunch of despondent faces staring back at you.
When my classes start to seem apathetic, I like to spice things up with some classic English jokes!
Jokes are a great way to lighten the atmosphere in your classroom and, when used appropriately, they can be a fun way to get students practicing their English.¹³
Using jokes in your classroom will not only get your students laughing, they’ll keep them learning too!
8 Side-splitting Ways to Teach Classroom Anecdotes in English
Jokes are a great way to keep your students engaged and interested in learning English. They provide a vehicle for you to introduce different cultural aspects and scenarios. Plus, they’re great for giving students the opportunity to use English in a more real-world, everyday setting.
With jokes, students will still be learning how to use the English language, but will be removed from the dryness of grammar exercises and textbooks. They provide an excellent chance to practice intonation and pronunciation, and students will likely encounter a significant amount of new vocabulary too.
One of the best reasons to use jokes in the classroom is that they help students become aware of the subtleties of the language. They will see how some words have two or more meanings or how some words are homophones, like “red” and “read” in the riddle: What’s black and white and red all over? (A newspaper)

8 Ways You Can Use Jokes and Anecdotes in Your Classroom

1. Do a Presentation on the Many Types of Jokes and Anecdotes Available
You could spend a whole lesson on jokes! Introduce your students to all the different types of jokes:
Puns
One-liners
Knock-knock jokes
Riddles
Common jokes
Prepare a slide presentation or a handout on the various forms jokes take. Start with a general description and provide examples. Within the examples, you may need to explain the answer in detail.
Once you’ve presented your description and explanation of each type of joke, give students a chance to practice what they learned. You can prepare a short worksheet for them to fill out that includes various examples of jokes you want them to identify. Or, if you want to go more in depth, you can display jokes on the board one at a time and ask the class to identify the jokes and, when applicable, come up with an answer.
Here are some examples you can include in your lesson:
Puns
A type of joke that exploits the different possible meanings of a word.
Q: How much does a pirate pay for corn?
A: A buccaneer (a “buck an ear” meaning “a dollar per ear”)
Q: Why was King Arthur’s army too tired to fight? 
A: It had too many sleepless knights (the common “knight” versus “night” issue)
Q: What do you call a thieving alligator?
A: A Crook-o-dile (“crook” the informal word for “thief”)
Q: What do you call a bee that can’t make up its mind?
A: A Maybe
These puns are great to start with because they include some new vocabulary, slang and will, with any hope, instigate a conversation on spelling and pronunciation.
One-Liners
This type of joke is pretty straightforward. It’s basically just a witty play on words.
So what if I don’t know what “Armageddon” means? It’s not the end of the world. 
Did you hear about the crook who stole a calendar? He got twelve months!
I’ve just written a song about tortillas; actually, it’s more of a rap!
Take time to explain, when necessary, each of the examples. You may need to cover the meaning of the word “Armageddon” in the first one-liner. In the second, you’ll have the chance to go over the phrase “to get ‘X amount of time.'” The third phrase is another nice example of a homophone.
Knock-Knock Jokes
The quintessential joke of childhood. A simple question and answer type of joke.
A: Knock, knock!
B: Who’s there? 
A: Beets!
B: Beets who?
A: Beets me!
A: Knock, knock!
B: Who’s there?
A: Kiwi 
B: Kiwi who?
A: Kiwi go to the store? 
A: Knock, knock!
B: Who’s there?
A: Lettuce 
B: Lettuce who?
A: Let us in, we’re freezing! 
A: Knock, knock
B: Who’s there? 
A: Figs 
B: Figs who?
A: Figs the doorbell, it’s broken! 
In many cases, knock-knock jokes are a play on words and optimize the use of homophones. With these types of jokes, you can show students how important clear pronunciation really is. For example, “figs,” when said quickly and with poor pronunciation, comes out sounding like “fix.”
Riddles
Riddles are not always funny, but let’s consider them a close relative of the joke. They often require a lot of thinking and take advantage of the ambiguity of the English language.
Q: The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?
A: Footsteps
Q: You see a boat filled with people. You look again, but this time you don’t see a single person on the boat. Hint: The boat has not sunk. 
A: All the people on the boat are married 
Students must understand what the riddles are asking and carefully think about their answers. They test their knowledge of the language and force them to carefully consider, words meanings, verb tenses and phrasing.

Common Jokes

A regular joke usually has a short story or anecdote with a punchline at the end that makes everyone laugh.
Tip: Make sure to include an explanation of “punchline” in your lesson!
Teacher: Did your father help you with your homework? 
Student: No, he did it all by himself! 
Teacher: Tell me a sentence that starts with “I.” 
Student: I is the…
Teacher: Stop! Never put “is” after I.” Always put “am” after “I.”
Student: Okay…I am the ninth letter of the alphabet. 
A: Why did the chicken cross the road? 
B: To get to the other side! 
A: How many flies does it take to screw in a light bulb? 
B: Two, but nobody knows how they got in there/

2. Warmers or Wrap-up

Sometimes it can be fun to break the ice by telling a simple joke to start the day’s lesson. It’s not that hard to find jokes related to just about any topic you can imagine. For example, if you’ve planned a lesson on food or American culture, you could open your lesson with a short joke:
Q: What kind of nut has a hole?
A: A donut. 
Give the students at least a few minutes to try to figure out the answer. If a student guesses correctly, great! If not, give them the answer and provide them with an explanation as you see fit.
Another option is to wrap-up a class with a joke.
A good joke is perfect for easing any lingering tension, especially after a long, hard lesson.
You can even give challenge your students with a riddle at the end of class, asking them to report back with their answers in the next class.
If possible, try to use a riddle that’s related to the material you discussed in class. For example, for a lesson on weather, you might use:
Q: I fly without wings, I cry without eyes. What am I?
A: Clouds
3. Complete the Joke or Fill in the Blank
This activity is ideal for practicing reading comprehension and critical thinking once students are familiar with the types of jokes we have in English.
Prepare a worksheet that lists as many different jokes as you like. For each joke, remove one of the keywords and put it in a word bank box at the top of the worksheet. In class, instruct students to work individually or in small groups to fill in the missing words and complete the jokes. Students must carefully read each joke and understand it to determine which word from the word bank fits in the blank.
4. Match the Beginning of the Joke with Its Ending
Great for encouraging teamwork, critical thinking and general language practice, this activity will keep your students engaged and curious.
For this activity, you will need to type up a list of jokes you’d like to use with your students. Type them in such a way that you can cut them in half. Then, print the sheet out and cut the jokes in half so that the beginning of the joke is separated from its punchline.
For example, if you use the joke: I’m a big fan of whiteboards. I find them quite re-markable. “I’m a big fan of whiteboards” should be on one slip of paper and “I find them quite re-markable” should be on another.
In class, distribute the pieces of the jokes so that each student has a slip of paper. The students must circulate the room and talk with each other in order to find the beginning or ending half of the joke they have.

. A foreign language teacher can take two possible approaches to introducing a joke in language teaching:

The first approach concentrates on a more profound purpose and that is to teach students how the English sense of humour works.
The second approach deals with a rather straightforward use of jokes in the teaching of vocabulary and grammar.