Rosalind,
Although I have not had any experience in working in an English Corner Activity, I have had experience in working in a weekly ESL Activity that was designed to motivate students to learn English. This is an activity used with Adult ESL Learners at the Community College Level. What we did was hold a weekly Movie Club which ran for one hour on Thursday of each week. During this time, a popular movie in English, such as "Mrs. Doubtfire", Or "Dr. Doolittle", or "You've Got Mail" would be shown. Before showing the Movie, vocabulary worksheets with vocabulary from the film would be given to the students and then discussed. The movie would be shown with the English Caption function on the TV enabled. Thus, students could see the film, hear the dialogue, and see the words as well. Since the films usually ran about two hours, we would show one hour each week. We also made time to have a discussion of the movie and to have the students talk about it as a way to develop their Oral Fluency Skills. Using this activity helps students to develop both Listening and Speaking Skills, and is a fun way to help them practice their English Conversational Skills. Hope this helps!
Dr. Yanni Zack