I found it was very effective to have them narrate their story and I’d take notes, then we could try to piece it together into a coherent outline/essay

Practice wording questions in multiple ways; be prepared to define words that you think would be common/easy to understand/hard to define.

If working with multilingual students and their grammar/usage is affecting meaning but they might not understand that, you might want to point out how you read/understand what was written.