Hey Joyce - I envy you! What a fascinating and challenging position you've got there. Teaching absolute beginners can be one of the most rewarding experiences and one of the most challenging facing an EFL teacher. But your situation, that of teaching students who have no written language of their own, coupled with the fact that they've had little classroom experience can no doubt be daunting as well.

Your post doesn't mention how much prior expereince you've had or what kind of training, so it's a little difficult to determine what kind of advice I should offer; however, my first thought after reading your post is that you must be doing something right as you have stated that more and more students are arriving for lessons. In that regard, you must have passed the first hurdle - you've managed to create and maintain interest. I suspect that as time goes on your creative juices will be flowing freely and the times in which you feel you are not accomplishing enough will be few and far between. Even still, remember that those times come to all of us and don't be too hard on yourself - just get back to the basics and let your training take over for awhile.

My own experience with absolute beginners - Mexican immigrants with little or no prior education - taught me a few things that I suspect you are already aware of; albeit, here goes:

First, your students need to be aware that it is a shared experience. That is to say, you are less a teacher and more a participant in the learning process. One way to achieve this is the actual set-up of the classroom. Avoid as much as possible the standard learning environment of the teacher "here" and the students "there." Yes, there is a great deal of teacher modeling necessary in your situation, but it must be done in more of a participatory fashion versus you being the actress that they are watching on stage.

Next, it seems as though you have the perfect opportunity to further illustrate that you are part of the learning process by showing a sincere interest in their language - not as a means of teaching bilingually, but simply as a means of sharing. I've found that students are very appreciative of this and that appreciation makes it more enjoyable for them to learn English. Your interest in their language should seem very spontaneous though and not linked to any particular lesson.

From a more practical standpoint, I would advise a lot of illustrations. Graphics are very important in any ESL/EFL environment, but in your situation it seems of tantamount importance. Again, this should be a sharing process. If you can get your students to bring pictures of any kind to the classroom, they will feel as though they are helping. At first, you can just make it seem as though you're wishing to decorate the classroom. Pictures of people are great of course because you can begin teaching the action that's going on in the pictures, and in this way you can reinforce the present progressive. Colorful pictures are great - well, you get the picture (no pun intended), "the woman is wearing a beautiful, red, scarf." "The man is playing with his children."

Since you have new students arriving all the time, you will soon have a multi-level classroom. Be sure, especially during pair work, that you often combine the stronger learners with the weaker. Peer group learning/teaching is a real plus. Above all, avoid "teaching to the middle."

In the interest of brevity, I'll just mention one last thing. Personalize! Make your lessons as personal to your students as possible. You won't have to feign interest in their lives because I'm sure you find it all very fascinating there. Sure, they're interested in your life too, but at this point in the learning process, well, I think you understand my meaning.

Good luck Joyce, and I hope you'll keep us posted about your progress. What a great situation you're in right now! By the way, though I am somewhat entrenched in China right now and have no intention of leaving, I'd still be very interested in knowing how you found your job. I think that many new teachers, especially those with a real interest in socio-linguistics, would love to be in your situation. And of course some of us older dudes would love it too.