I just introduced measure words to my pupils this week. (They are non-natives too, in year 9.) I used some English examples, saying, 'If I had some chewing gum and wanted to offer you some, I would ask if you wanted a...of gum,' and they all said, 'Piece.' I then made up similar situations like naughty children might be a lump/piece of coal from Father Christmas or that people on the beach might watch a flock of seagulls, getting them to call out the 'measure word' each time. Then I just said that although we only use words like 'piece,' 'lump' or 'flock' with certain nouns, Mandarin requires words like that for every noun. I wrote 'number - measure word - noun' on the board and they all copied it into the 'patterns' section we have set up in their notebooks. I emphasised that numbers and nouns will not be next to each other but will always a measure word in between. We are using Chinese for GCSE so there followed a lot of discussion in the target language about how many cats and dogs people have. Hope that helps a bit.