[Ebag Xor]

I teach in ESL in China and My class sizes just doubled from the completely unmanageable 70 student classes to auditorium style 140 student classes. The students are all girls about 18-20. My job is to teach 'oral english' which means I need the students to talk, but I have tremendous difficulty with everything from getting them to read the distant chalkboard from the back of the auditorium (that's right chalkboard) to hearing when a single student addresses the class-they are often very far away and the room has rather poor sound dynamics. Is there anything y'all suggest to have them talk amongst themselves? I've tried many things...scenario role play, survey questioning, writing a story and telling it to neighbors, etc...with only marginal success because there is a wide range of skills between the individuals. Keep in mind that multimedia is not an option.

I'm about to just surrender and kill my voice every day lecturing on grammar and pronouns, but I would love to actually teach them to produce and respond to english sentences. Any suggestions? Or is this just hopeless? If I wasn't such a tough guy I'd use this emoticon