21
In the next session, the researcher will explain further about the medium that is used to observe whether the student have low anxiety level or high anxiety level in
speaking English. The medium is Hot Seat.
3. Hot Seat Game in Speaking Class
According to Jeremy Harmer 2001, games which are designed to provoke communication between students frequently depend on an information gap so that
one student has to talk to a partner in order to solve a puzzle, draw a picture describe and draw, put things in the right order describe and arrange, or find similarities and
differences between pictures. Television and radio games, imported into the classroom, often provide good fluency activities. As it has been mentioned before, the
name of the Hot Seat activity was inspired from a quiz in television. It is one of techniques which is designed by the lecturer of the English Language Study Program
of Sanata Dharma University. It is the example of public communication, as Grice and Skinner 1995 say, public communication occurs when one person speaks face
to face with the audiences. Meanwhile according to Brown 2007, students at the intermediate to advanced levels are called on to give extended monologues in the
form of oral reports, summaries, or perharps short speeches. Creating good atmospheres and implementing realistic contexts in the
classroom should be one of the teachers top priorities in order to help students overcome their feelings of insecurity and fear when talking and orally interacting
22
with others, thereby the teacher should enable them to build up their confidence and self-esteem, while at the same time making their learning enjoyable.
Nimmannit 1998 comments on this in her work explaining what a typical class in an EFL classroom is; she describes how students are sitting in neat rows
listening attentively to the teacher and obediently following each stage of the teachers instructions. The teacher directs questions to specific students, and
occasionally calls for volunteers, but students generally seem reluctant to respond. She also explains that students will be more motivated if they are exposed to
activities to which they can relate, which encourage them to use the target language, and which allow them to choose what they want to say.
Hernandez-Herrero 2005 discusses in his study, the importance of using different contexts and settings in the classroom in order to help students from the
University of Costa Rica when acquiring English oral production skills. The researcher’s findings show that many students think oral presentations is helpful to
improve their oral production skills because they prepare their assignments and topics more carefully; that is, they feel that facing the whole class requires more of them
than working in small groups. In addition, even though they feel nervous, oral presentations give them the opportunity to practice public-speaking techniques, skills
which they consider very important for students who plan to teach in the future. The implementation of hot seat is different from each level. In the first and
second semester, the students are still given a chance to prepare the material that they are going to talk. Meanwhile in third and fourth semester, the students have to