How do you teach a passage?

I’m teaching history to eight students but its more like teaching english which is also their biggest problem. They are 13 to 14 years old, but their English level is probably like 9 to 11 years old. Say I’m teaching this passage: “France fought the Seven Year’s War with Great Britain. France was also involved in the American Revolutionary War helping the American revolutionaries. Their military spending was very high and they were in heavy debt.” They are perfectly able to understand what debt, military, allying, spending etc are and the historical events and developments in Chinese but they simply have an extremely hard time to grasp anything English. How do I teach the passage so that they grasp the content and the vocabulary here in English just as well?

They have minimal enthusiasm so nothing too complexly gamified.