To make students talk, the input and activity itself should be interesting. But interest may be not enough for stimulating students to talk and communicate: it should be compelling.
If the input and the activity is compelling, it will engages the students completely. Their sense of self and time is diminished: Only the story exists.
Being immersed in a feeling of energized focus and full involvement in the process of the story/activity, they may temporarily forget that they are hearing and talking in another language.
The more engaged we are, the more compelled we are to speak and contribute to the discussion, even though our language production is not so fluent and accurate yet.
So there you go: Getting the student lost in the process is at the core of ways to make people communicate.
school of delight 