[alawton]

Hello,

I have plenty of experience with teaching English to that age group, and I know exactly how you feel! The replies I've seen to your post were similar to what I was thinking. Find out what interests them and talk about that. Another thing you can do to snap them out of their trance is to try a few vocabulary games/activities. I know this doesn't promote a conversation, but it almost always gets kids going. You can try the discussion after doing a game like hang man or pictionary. If you make the activity a competition the students get even more into it. I've never had success with getting a good discussion going if I haven't done some kind of warm up. I hope this helps.