Teaching Basic English to Adults

Does anyone know any good exercises for teaching things like numbers and the alphabet to adults with close to no English. The things that I know are more for kids and they don't seem to enthuastic to do chants etc.

HELP!

Anything you have would be great! So far I have them doing alot of spelling and getting used to letters producing certain sounds (ie: ish, ion, ch) but its getting a bit dull. I need something to liven it up a bit.

I don't think they would react well to Sesame Street videos.

Thanks Chris you're a STAR
I found some lessons that could be useful if I modify them slightly. I'll let you know how they work out.

Hey Tam,

I actually just finished a training class geared towards students with basic English skills. One of the websites that you might want to check out is [link] . I wish I could send you some of these hand outs that we got. They are really good for basic ESL students!

Now for my question: Does anyone have any good ideas for advanced ESL students? I have a student that really needs to improve things like his sentence structure but I don't want to bore him with very basic activities.

Any ideas would be most appreciated!

-Greg

Hey Greg,
Thank for the tip I'll have a look at the site.
I found a great activity for sentence structure is the following game, known in my old staff room as ADD ONS. With students advanced enough it can spiral off into an entire class and can have hilarious results.

Begin by writing a verb at the top the board, making sure not to use any capital letters. The students are then asked to add words and build it into a sentence. Once that has been done take the third word in the sentence and use it to begin a new sentence. The students then create another sentence and once again the third word in that is used to start the next sentence.

As an additional twist in a large class divide into 3 groups. Group A are responsible for the story on the board. The other two groups must follow the pattern and create their stories using the words from Groups A's sentences. I usually give Group B the fifth word and Group C the seventh Group A must create sentences with at least 7 words! The groups then have to read out their stories and the group with the least corrections wins.

Heres an example:
write
I want to write a letter.
To do this I must buy some paper.
This is something I do not want to do.
Something else I don't want to do is buy a stamp. etc

Its given us loads of laughs so I hope it helps.