I use conversation and chat a lot, in fact, every day, when we begin our lessons, we have a ‘news of the day’ section. I look for articles or videos they might find interesting and then we discuss about them. Some of my students say that they enjoy those minutes because they hear about current news while using English. I follow the press (The New York Times, The Guardian, Time, science websites, some comedians...) on Facebook. They also bring articles and videos they think their friends might find interesting. To someone who might start doing it, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are a wonderful source of information!
For the students who never engage…well, I have the tendency to ask them in the class, easy questions, for instance, if we are dealing with some vocabulary after having read those articles and they have to look it up on their phones or by asking them to look for some interesting news themselves for the next day. Then they have time to prepare