tropic of cancer

Reading skills are one issue but if you are a non-thai speaker the main barrier you face in teaching/motivating is the poor listening skills.
Many thai English teachers at my school cannot speak English (or even understand much). Naturally the kids can't either then. Entire English lessons will go by without any English being spoken. The thai teachers won't use tapes because:
a/ they say 'the children don't like them (well true but learning a language is difficult: your job is to help them overcome the difficulties)
b/ they themselves are embarrassed to have to 're-model' the English when their attempts are so obviously deficient (when set against the native speaker on the tape)

As such I have M6 students who can recognise the past perfect progressive but who can't (or won't) answer simple questions like 'what are your interests?' or 'how many brothers and sisters have you got?'

I do a quiz before each lesson (Team A v Team B or Boys v Girls): recycle the same questions and ask one or two new ones each week. 'What is the opposite of...' (board 'opposite')
'What three colours are on the flag of...' (Draw a flag - this is a good one)
'What language do people speak in America?Brazil?Mexico?Scotland?'
Capitals, currencies, continents, animals whatever you can think of
I also throw in a maths element (pre-teach plus, minus, times and throw sums their way)
It sometimes becomes like a geography lesson and of course the same half-dozen answer all the questions but at least it's a good warm-up and forces them to listen and try to differentiate words. It works better with younger Matyoms of course.