Such a great honest question. I would wrap vocabulary learning around telling stories or asking questions of the class vs just looking up words in a list AND playing games. For example: "Yesterday I acquired a chartreuse cardigan for my foster sibling"---------WHAT DID I DO? Then we would have a class discussion on what that meant and develop other ways to say it. Or do a timed exercise and give the students 1 minute to re-create what I said in their own words then have various students read their answers. Have the entire class critique and evaluate. Play word games e.g. How many different ways do you know to say the word, QUICKLY? Make small teams (yes, each team has to create an English team name) and again be a timed exercise. Have incentives for the winning teams like getting to leave class first or getting chose where to sit etc. The sky is the limit and my own creativity and the classes English level and willingness would determine what we would do. Learning should be fun and strive to combine the two!

I grew up with the boring "lecture and take notes" era, so I rebel against it. I think a teacher's tools are most important. When I teach, I find it important to find out my students' interests. For example, my students enjoy rock music, so i use a rock song; they listen to the song and look for the argument/s since it is a writing class. After they have done that, they must form a thesis with the main points of the song. I also find it fun to review general English knowledge with whiteboard games. i have about 10 small white boards, and students compete against one another while I ask a question and they have some time to answer it. Yes, it may be an elementary technique, but students love it. And another thing I do is have them do writing assignments on very large paper with markers that come in fruit flavors. Whiteboards and fruity-scented markers make us feel nostalgic. I think we all wish we could have as much fun as we did in elementary school. :)

If I was a teacher, I'd do my best to arrange brain-storming meetings with Derrick to get interesting ideas like the ones listed above... I do believe in creative and amusing teaching too, so I'd incentivate a lot of role-plays as conversation exercises, collective story-inventing sessions (one starts with a sentence and the next one has to add another making sense... finally we should have an original story, funny if possible); and then Let's listen to some native songs and try to understand as much as you can, or learn a song to sing together, and tomorrow we'll go into the tv room and watch a movie without subtitles... what? You do want subtitles for you're afraid not to understand anything? Ahah my dear pupil, this is a poor Italian school: we don't have any dvd subtitled movie, only old cassettes, so try to make an effort and be convinced you'll understand something... or you mean to say I'm such a bad teacher that you didn't even learn enough to watch a movie?! ;P

Getting a friend on here to exchange messages is quite realistic, because you ask where they live about their work and unlike in class you do not know how the conversation will go on... In my Spanish class we ask "where are you from " and reply "I live ..." but it is better if you are interested in a native person...