Beginners

To Frustrated teachers
You think you're not measuring up?
you're a bit dissatisfied with your teaching method?
Slow learners? or wrong method?

Before you flog yourself for not succeeding in getting them to learn what you want them to learn and how you want them to learn it, speak to your students, get their feedback. The odds are that you'll feel uplifted by what they say about you. They want results, if there are results, if they feel they are making progress they are likely to be happy with your performance even if they and you think you can perform better.
Try not to be too tough on your teaching skills, on yourself. 

What I do with false beginners is book work plus writing and speaking practice that involves them and their family, friends or colleagues to get them to use the phrases seen. And get them to take one step further. We're doing Jobs, ask them what the people in the photos studied to become xyz and see how much they retain, show analogies with endings as a secondary (or terciary) objective, as an awareness-raising goal.

Ideas with readers:
Readers reading seem to be a task they enjoy. Read at home (listen and read with audio available), go through vocab they lookeed up at home in class, read in class,choose scenes and perform, put illustrations in order (negotiate, discuss),
favorite character, why? describe
favourite scene, why?
summary of book/chapters
author
time it was set in
test their new vocabulary
chronology of events
translate paragraphrs
...