Consider all of the issues when teaching beginners:

They don't speak!
They need to learn the alphabet.
How can I correct them?
It's tiring.
Drilling gets monotonous
Students feel nervous
Will they speak in pairs?
Listening skills

Here are some ideas:

1. Drilling with cards, i.e. flash cards or words cards.

Hold up cards and prompt the students to use the word on the card in a grammatical structure.
(www.englishshoponline.com has flashcards)

2. Passing card

Put students into small groups e.g. fours or fives and tell them to sit in circles. Give one student in each circle a flashcard e.g. a picture of a man running. Tell the student to use the verb on the flashcard in the grammatical structure that you are practising e.g. I usually run in the mornings.

Once the student has done this, tell him/her to pass the card onto the person on his/her right. That person then has to do the same. Keep repeating the activity until the cards have gone around the students in the circles. Then give them the next flashcard. To make it more fun, tell each cicrle that it's a race and the circle to finish first gets a point.

3. Touch bodies activities

In front of the class say a body part e.g. arm and touch that part of your body. Tell the students to stand up and touch the body part that you say. This can act as a quick warmer at the beginning of a lesson.

4. Look!

Tell students to look in the way that you tell them to look. For example: Look tired, look happy etc. After the students have done this, ask them to say: I am tired; I am happy etc.

5. Spelling drill

If students have specific problems with the alphabet and spelling, say a word and then get the students to spell it. For example apple, the students should say APPLE. If they are younger learners they can spell the words with their bodies (A bit like the song YMCA).

6. Tongue Twisters

Say a tongue twister which focuses on the students' pronunciation problems e.g. 33 thirsty theatregoers thought about the weather
After you have said it, ask the students to repeat it word by word.

To develop this, higher level students can write their own tongue twisters which work on a specific sound which they have trouble with.

7. Jazz chants

Drill any structures from the course book but with rhythm, i.e. by clapping the beat as you say the sentence or by clicking your fingers (Check out materials by Caroline Graham).

8. Shout a structure

As a warmer, tell the students that you are going to say a structure e.g. going to and they have to make a sentence as quickly as possible using this structure. For example: I am going to go out tonight.

9. Whispering drill

If you have played the telephone game or Chinese whispers, you will know how to play this. Get the students to sit in a line on the floor, one behind the other. Whisper a grammatical structure in the ear of the student at the front of the line. Tell him/her to whisper it to the next person. He/She then whispers it to the next and so on until it has got to the last person in the line. At the end, ask the last student to say the structure. It has usually changed by the time it has gone around the students and ends up being funny.