Because I’m EVIL! What else could it possibly be? Why would anyone make fun of someone’s pronunciation or accent if it’s not simply for the….fun of it? Look, I’m not going to sit there and lie to you, it IS fun. Am I doing it for fun though? No. Am I doing it because I think it works? Hell yeah. It works. It works as in it actually produces results. Why? Because it pinches. That’s right. Sarcasm pinches. A pinch gets more attention than say…a word, a shout or even a tap. If the pinch hurts a little bit, you’re more likely to remember the words that come after it (the pinch).
Having been a pronunciation teacher and trainer for the last decade or so, I have had the chance to see the critical role that emotional memory plays in learning. What emotional memory allows us to do is to retain or keep what we have learned. Anyone can learn. I can read an article packed with informative facts but how long would I be able to keep the information in my head? A few hours, a day, two, a week? Ideally, you would want to have it stick around inside your head for as long as possible, right? Well, the best way to do that is to connect to what you’re learning on an emotional level.
Here’s an example. Let’s assume Students 1 and 2 are reading Author 1 and Author 2’s bio which they have an exam about in a week or two. Each book is over 300 pages packed with information. In Author 1’s book, Student 1 reads “…for an unknown reason, Author 1 loved the orange color and used to wear it all the time, he was hardly seen in any other color, that remained a mystery until the day he died.”
Now in Author 2’s book, Student 2 reads “After the sudden death of his mother whom he had almost worshiped, Author 2 was always seen wearing pink. No one quite understood his fascination with pink until after his death when his closest friend revealed that Author 2’s mother was dressed in a pink gown on her deathbed!”
On the day of the exam, Student 1 and 2 are asked the following the question:
“What was the color that the Author was always seen wearing?”.
Now who do you think is more likely going to remember the answer? Most probably, it’s going to be Student 2. Student 2 will remember the Author’s favorite color because it is associated with an emotionally charged event, which is the death of the author’s mother. The event carries an emotional load that helps Student 2’s brain to subconsciously mark the “color” information as significant information worthy of long-term storage.
You don’t believe me? Well don’t. Maybe you believe science. In the October 5, 2007, issue of the journal Cell, a publication of Cell Press, after experimenting with mice, a team of researchers reported that “Surges of the stress hormone norepinephrine (also known as noradrenaline) that often accompany strong emotions spark a series of molecular events that ultimately strengthen the connections between neurons.”
Think about it. “This phenomenon is something everyone can identify with,” said Roberto Malinow of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. “You can probably remember where you were when you heard about 9/11, but you probably don’t know where you were on 9/10. We’ve identified one mechanism that may underlie this effect.”
So sarcasm triggers strong emotions in students that make the brain work more efficiently. I use sarcasm because I need my students to remember the mouth movements, error corrections and sound patterns they hear and produce during the lesson. I know many students hate it (not my students because my students love it) because sarcasm is typically seen as rude and arrogant (as you can tell from some of the comments that viewers on my YouTube clip) but the truth is that, when used for educational purposes, it can be a very powerful tool.
So to all of you who are seething with rage and anger, good for you! 🙂