Spoken English

I was wondering how everyone feels about specifically learning English speaking and pronunciation - as opposed to writing and grammar. As a teacher, I think students best learn to speak by learning complete phrases, not just words and grammar. I ask students to watch videos, and many of them greatly improve their speaking by doing so. But many times online videos are either too hard or too easy for a given student. I also found some common spoken phrases on youtube, that seems to help speaking beginners (many people know a lot of English but cannot really speak). An example : www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXMT3UL2zIfN0kDDaUGQJBy5r7rFW9CIg
I would be interested in hearing other people's exeprience with regards to speaking ? What works for you and what doesn't ?