Sometimes in higher grades kids will have taken on board influences from teachers, parents and TV and sometimes in class will gladly boast “Eigo wakaranai!” – “I don’t understand any English”. Obviously you need to stamp this thinking out before it spreads.
I’ve just written up an idea I use that works really well, and involves showing kids ( or teachers!) that they can understand half of an English newspaper without evening studying ( well sort of !).
It’s a similar approach to that taken by Michel Thomas, where in the first few minutes of his course you realise you can actually understand hundreds of words of French
