The Nature of Games

addition, all the students are able to participate in the group and class discussion, practicing oral speech. 4. Directed Discussion Games Based on background of the problem that indicates the students in SMAN 2 Sleman have less interest to get involve in practicing speaking skill, it come up into a problem solving to use directed discussion games. This section explains the nature of games, the concept of directed discussion games and how to apply those games in classroom. a. The Concept of Directed Discussion Games To manage the large class which is consisted of more than twenty students, the teacher needs to develop classroom activities more meaningful so that there is no unnecessary chatting among the students. Discussion game may help improving speaking skill in higher level like in secondary school. There are some arguments emerging discussion game to be used in EFL class. Kayi 2006 argues that a discussion can be held for various reasons. The students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event, or find solutions in their discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the discussion activity is set by the teacher. The important things when the teacher conduct a discussion game is the learning method that will be used for directing the learner to do discussion game appropriately. The activity may be arranged in three phases; engage, study, and activate ESA. The teacher can show some pictures and explain an issue about current phenomena so that the students can comprehend first about the topic that will be taught later. After that, a group of discussion is formed in this phase and students can join in their group to learn more about the topic. Searching new information related to the topic issue also can be done in the study phase. Finally, the students move into activate stage that is discussion itself. Another review about discussion is proposed by Thornburry 2005: 102. He says that many teacher would agree that the best discussion in the class are those that arises spontaneously, either because of something personal that a learner reports or because a topic or a text in the course book triggers some debate. There are five generic discussion formats according to Thornburry 2005. The first is discussion card that is deal with the card including some statement about certain topic. The cards are prepared by the teacher and the group of student will discuss it with their classmate. There will be two comments, the positive one and the opposite that can lead of the expressing students’ opinion. The second activity is warming up discussion and again the teacher hold as a moderator in the class. Begin with introducing new topic followed by some question related to that, the students will give opinions in the whole class. The next discussion format is merely like a decision thinking or called as a balloon debate. This kind of games adapted the concept of hot air balloon overloaded with the passengers, each group member represent different profession. There will be a discussion and decision about who will be saved and who will be sacrificed followed of the reason. The fourth format is pyramid consensus debate that let students to make a list of arguments and find other students who agree with them to join after. The students who persuade others to agree can use their strong opinion about their arguments and it can be rejected by others. Each student in the class can select which group they will join in based on their perception an agreement of that list of arguments. The last format of discussion is a panel discussion which adopts television debate. There will be two groups of pros and cons debate an issue based on the two sides of view. A teacher can act as a chairperson of this kind of activity and also gives a topic that will be debated. b. Directed Discussion Games Implementation in the Classroom As mentioned before, discussion activity should occur in the higher level class. Students in secondary school can have this type of activity to help them encourage both speaking skill and speaking motivation. According to Green 2002 in Richard 2002-225, many EFL teachers never attempt discussion games in classroom as there are some constraints related to the member of class, language proficiency and time. Hence, there are efforts to make discussion games more meaningful in classroom activity to encouraging speaking skill through guided and structured discussion.