Teaching English

I'm reading a book by an American author and linguist who has lived in Japan since the early nineties. It's really good. The fluent way he writes in Japanese is a real inspiration, though I get a bit annoyed when I have to look up these really academic words and expressions he tends to use: I think he's just showing off.
The papers often print articles over here about how 'we' Japanese seem to come last or thereablouts in league tables of the countries that speak English as a second language. It's a bit of a national complex.
This author had a really interesting theory about where the weakness lies.
In Japanese schools, when you start to learn English, you start with a very basic sentence structure like, 'This is a pen.' or 'John is a boy.' Sounds logical, right?
But it's not much bloody use to you as a communication tool if you have zero vocabulary.
When I started studying Japanese (or French, for that matter), one of the first things I learned to say was 'What is this?' or 'How do you say this in Japanese / French?'
It seems so obvious. I mean look at how a kid of two or three learns - a thousand and one questions.
I hope I can use this simple shift in mindset to help future students...
{Cut to me dressed in Mother Theresa-like robes curing the poor, huddled masses of their verbal constipation, intransitive objects and ill-defined articles.}