Welcome to the world of teaching! All above are certainly correct and the only thing I would emphasize is STRUCTURED conversation activities.  In any ESL training program it is stated that language production is the essence of language instruction and vital to successful language acquisition, so don �t feel you �re being a pushover:-)  Games, role-plays, and debates are great.  Games such as Taboo force students to describe vocabulary and use their language skills.  Putting up a picture and having students describe what they see is also a very simple task.  You can require use of certain tenses or more complex vocabulary, as well to increase difficulty.  Pronunciation activities are also valuable.  Another great game for vocab and pronunciation is Last Man Standing. Have students form a circle while standing.  State a topic, for example past participles or ocean vocab, and students (one at a time) must say one example to stay in the circle.  Once a student runs out of ideas, they must sit down and the student that has continued to think of words, i.e. is the last man standing, wins. Google is able to guide you well and simply do some searches on above mentioned ideas or find new ones.

Hopefully, you have some sort of text to work with and have access to a guide with additional activities and perhaps a website with more resources.

Of course, there is a multitude of conversation activities on this site and games that spur conversation.

Have fun:-)!

I agree with all the advice you were given but I �d like to add my little contribution according to my own experience. I often use movies in my conversation class since they give you authentic material to work with. In films you find:

*different accents (according to nationality or social background)

*cultural issues

*characters (personalities and appearances to be described, to be compared, and so on)

*setting

*songs in the soundtrack

You can also do a activities with film-related material like movie reviews that you can get in the internet : You make sts work in pairs and give a different review to each of them. Then you give out a set of questions to be answered after reading their review.

	Review 1	Review 2
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3

You can also work with songs which are topic related to the film you �re working with. For example, at present I �m working with the film "Freedom Writers" which deals with the topic of intolerance, racism and gangs; so we also worked with the songs "Where �s the Love?" by The Black Eyed Peas and " Man in the Mirror" by Michael Jackson.

 

I think you �ve been working with the death penalty topic, haven �t you? You could use the film "Death Man Walking" with Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon. I know it �s and excellent film.

 

Although my students and I are all native Spanish speakers and you have a richer cultural background where you teach, I hope you find useful my piece of advice.

 

Good luck!

 

Paula