Years ago the classical form of learning meant repeating sentences or short sentences so that the person was immersed into a narrative. The Kernel books that I used to use had a narrative that would build up over time and the person would build up their vocabulary as the story progressed. There are other methods to get a new language across. One way is by repeating a sentence so a person can at least understand the sound of a sentence and get an oral sense of how the words are strung is strung together. Today presenting an object and then attaching words to it so as to create an image assist people so they can gradually learn sentences.
I have been able to adapt from textbook to textbook and various methods along the way and in the way the best method of getting people to converse is by talking as less as possible. One should also have them initiate the conversation and learn various aspects of it like objecting to a piece of information, adding an opinion and learning to question.
Whichever the person learns to speak he should be made aware of the opportunities he has and to use his strengths to balance out his weaknesses. That said he should not exclude the possibility of integrating a phonetic exercise to boost his awareness of where the stress goes on words in another language. Often enough he will remind the teacher that the stress on a word is different in the language of the learner. A contemporary approach would be having the student being aware of that but then have him focus on accepting a new way of pronouncing things.
