I've got a class right now consisting of 9 15-17 year old students,  5 of which won't speak English. Not in "full class", and hardly even smaller groups of 2 or 3. They won't talk "if I'm there" (and I assume they don't talk when I'm not there either), and it's becoming a big problem. Both on account of it being very hard to conduct any kind of oral exercise in class since I know those 5 will remain silent (and the remaining are considerably more confident and will take over), but also because it becomes hard to assess them. It's also really hard to vary my lessons since they're essentially limiting themselves to only doing written assignments and reading exercises. Any exercises that involves talking about a piece of text or video-clip is essentially a waste of time at this point. If I ever ask a follow-up or general question, they will not raise their hand to answer. If I ask them directly, they'll refuse. To make it even more problematic, they all perform pretty well in receptive skills and writing. This has led me to believe that it's more an issue of previous classroom trauma and insecurities rather than purely being a proficency issue.

In terms of building trust, creating a positive atmosphere and so on, I think I'm on my way. There are no students who show any kind of distrust towards me, and when I teach other subjects or talk with them on breaks our relationships are fine. I think it's just the mere fact that I'm a teacher that's making them insecure.

What I need are spoken exercises to break down bad confidence while still feeling meaningful. The times I've tried to make it as basic and safe as possible they have complained about it being boring and refused it on those grounds.

Essentially, the only thing that's "worked" was writing sentences on the white board in one group with two "silent" students and one ambitious one. They read them out loud after lots of convincing and frequent "let her do it"-type comments. I also managed to get them to read a segment of a movie script out loud to each other as long as I stayed on the other side of the class-room. I just feel that these aren't worthwhile activities in that sense. But being pretty desperate that's where I am now.

Has anyone been in the same situation before? 

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