Roland Said:

How to get started teaching ESL?

We Answered:

Start by finding out what they know and what they want to know. Are your adult students interested in bare survival skills, job-specific vocabulary, etc?
Explore the TPR and TPRS methodologies which have been very sucessful with new speakers of English.
The main idea is 'comprehensible input'--that you speak and they listen or they read language they can comprehend. They will be able to comprehend far more than they can produce. The language you use should be interesting, but repetitive, and use common structures over and over again, but with variation of vocabulary to keep them interested.
a simple example would be 'work at'. John do you work at McDonald's? No? Where (pause, wait for comprehension) do you work? Aah! Class, John works at Sear's! Does John work at Sear's? Does John work at Sear's or at McDonald's? Who works at Sear's? Where does John work. Does John or Sara work at Sear's. Does Sara work at Sear's? Where does Sara work? Sara do you work at home? Yes, Sara works at home.

I'm assuming in this example that 'works at' is a new structure or vocabulary. You should say the phrases in declarative, interrogative, positive and negative sentences until the students all understand it and your more advanced students are answering in sentences. You can add more structures around that vocabulary (Have you always worked at Sear's? Where did you work before? Class, John used to work at Joe's but now he works at Sears...) You don't really need to explain the grammar, but if you keep your language at the students i + 1 level (just beyond what they can easily produce themselves), they will acquire language.