reports are looming

what do you think of England and Japan? Here's what my middle schoolers think of them:

"Japanese are so kind person. But I still hate them." aahh, history. that hatred is not going to disappear for a looonnnnng time.

"England were very good country, people were very enthusiastic because of soccer. I love soccer, too. There were also famous soccer player, but foods were higgledy-piggedly (How does he know this word??) People excited about soccer match. there were the biggest soccer league. people have racial discrimination"

teaching writing is so frustrating. Trying to get middle schoolers (this class are all around 15 years old) to remember 5 basic things (articles in front of nouns, starting sentences with conjunctions, use of capital letters, etc etc) is impossible. I've been concentrating on the same 5 things for the last 3 months, and yet time after time after time, they just keep making the same mistakes, which makes it hard to be motivated in class.