[susan53]

There are lots of games you can play to promote conversation - for example - even if they only know there is/are you can play Kim's game : show students about fifteen objects one by one, check they know the name (choose objects which they should know), place them on the table and cover them with a tablecloth. The students in pairs have to remember what's there : There's a yellow scarf and a small, blue box ... If they also know prepositions of place you can take it on to a second stage. Ask them to remember where the objects are : The box is under the scarf ... etc.
Or if they know the present continuous do something similar with pictures : show ten pictures one at a time. At the end ask questions about the first picture to check that students know the necessary language and understand what they have to do. : How many people are there in the picture? Where are they? What are they doing? What are they wearing etc. then put students into pairs and ask them to remember what's in the pictures : There's a man. he's standing near the window and he's looking out. Outside there's a woman. She's washing the car. The man is wearing a blue sweater ...
As they do the activities, circulate and take notes of the mistakes they make. Put these on the board, and at the end ask the students to correct them.

Starting tomorrow I'm going to be running a series of articles on my site (link below) on using pictures to stimulate speaking in the classroom. You may find other activities you can use there.