With small groups, a useful exercise is to write down a simple, basic sentence and ask the students to add as many adverbs and adjectives to make the sentence more "colourful".

For example- "The man entered the room" becomes "The large, fat and sweating man came very slowly and silently into the dark and silent room".

This transforms a statement of fact into more of an "atmospheric story".

Thanks to Dr Howard Peak for this tip which comes from his blog on Teaching English.

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/tips/expanding-sentences