Lakshmi Gopalan, India
I find that giving them a topic of interest and throwing it open for discussion helps. I observed a class today where the teacher had written the topic and written a few points leading to it e.g the topic for today was "Has the modern school education achieved its goals?".The teacher wrote some of the goals and threw it open for discussion.The students had a lot to say and in the end were ready to write a speech on the topic.Try it in your classes

HAN J Mei, China
For kids, I'd give them pictures, articles,etc. so that they can use words to describe them. Or encourage them to write something after the class that interests them. For this group of students, motivation is very important from them. For adults, beginning from daily life and work will be better as they may be eager to learn how to communicate with others using English. So letters, CV, application for jobs, or life experience that they would like to share with others, etc. will be a good start, I think. I always correct my students' writing after they hand in their work. Then I sum up their common errors and explain why they were wrong and what has caused these and the correct ways of expressing themselves. I have found in my teaching that EFL adult learners like this very much because L2 follows a different route from L1. Adult learners can make use of their experience in L1 to comprehend better a different system so that they can use L2 with ease through practice.