How can I motivate my middle aged students?

I teach Japanese to some philippinas who aspire to become caregivers in Japan. They are mid 30s and 40s. They have been in Japan since around 2 years, via 技能実習制度. So I know that their living conditions are shit, to say the least. They basically work full time and have to study for multiple tests regularly, while receiving a wage of 10万 per month. But it's temporary. The problem is, that their Japanese just isn't improving in the slightest. At the beginning, I was told to prepare them for N3 as well as the 介護福祉士試験. So that's what I tried. But their Japanese level is kinda all over the place. Their vocab is kinda advanced when it comes to medical terms and such, but they can't for the life of me memorize simple verbs such as 行う or 従う. Their grammatical understanding is lacking heavily as well, so that's what I focused at first, teaching them the basics in grammar. The importance of understanding 他動詞 and 自動詞, repeating all the conjugations, repeating particles etc. And I give them some homework, usually vocabularly to learn or a text to prepare which we then read together. But they don't study ffs. Like, nothing. I teach them transitive and intransitive verbs for a whole week, but they have forgotten everything 2 weeks after. I'm at my wit's end. I'm not a teacher, I'm just a CIR that happens to teach Japanese. So if there are any fellow professionals or educators here, do you have advice? How would you motivate unmotivated students? Or maybe you have certain teaching methods? I'm grateful for advice.

Small update: One of my students passed the N3! The other did not, however 🙁

by Professional-Tip8581

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