The next essential activity to be introduced was the drama. Each group was to produce an unscripted and improvised play once a fortnight.

Other activities introduced were the Reading for Study in which a set of books was given to a group so that all could read the same book and then discuss it, answer set questions and do other activities based on it. This was an introduction to the idea of literature. (Many students are afraid of the idea of Literature as a school subject, believing it to be much more mysterious than it is. At this level, and indeed up to O-level equivalent, it was sufficient to be able to read a book a bit more carefully than a library book and be aware of such things as character, setting, plot and so on and to be able to have an opinion about what is interesting and what is not.)
Of course in the first few weeks there were instances of confusion when students were not certain what to do, and the early attempts at some of the activities were fairly rudimentary. The teachers debated whether it was wise to introduce the methods and activities so fast. But as almost all the activities were to be repeated at regular intervals, practice and teachers' advice and greater experience produced progress which the students as well as the teachers could notice. Since there was a consistent plan of activities and the worksheets made it clear what was to be done, the students' confusion was dispelled. In other courses where teachers retain control but do not tell the students what is going to happen next there can be even greater confusion and uncertainty which may well never be dispelled.

Most of the students worked diligently and with some enthusiasm even from the beginning. Enthusiasm was shown by the fact that whereas for most classes at the end of the school day students were keen to get out of the classroom, even during a thunderstorm, and be off to the dormitories, it was sometimes difficult to get them out of the English Block room at the end of afternoon school. At the beginning of a session students used to begin work without any need to be urged on by teachers.

Complaints
Some of the Form One students did complain about the unfamiliar methods they were encountering. They learned that English at Kakamega was being done in a different way from other schools.

One response by the teachers was to ask for complaints to be submitted in the form of a letter which they then replied to, pointing out that at least the student had learned about complaints letters.

Complaints of this kind were much commoner when the system was introduced to students in Form Two. These had already had three terms (for one stream) or four terms (for the other two streams) of a more conventional secondary English course and they found the change more disturbing. They made such remarks as "The government pays you to teach us. Why don't you?" The technique of asking for written letters of complaint was especially helpful here. Some of the students feared at the beginning that they would not learn anything new if the teachers didn't lecture. One of the interviewees (now a university law lecturer) remembers this fear:

I remember that one of my basic worries initially was that I was not going to learn any more English than I had done up to Standard seven level.

(Taped interview #1)
They believed that they would spend their secondary career merely rehearsing the English they had done in primary school. In fact, the secondary entrants did need to do just this - repeat the vocabulary they had learned in primary school - because they had acquired a number of non-standard English expressions and in many cases an erroneous grasp of structure so that a good deal of relearning needed to take place. The English learned in primary school rested on a small basis of what Krashen would call Input - that is, it had been learned by chanting and making lists with very little reading (except of the basic textbook and perhaps one reading book per year). There had been almost no communication through English and their knowledge of the meaning of words lacked the breadth of connotation which can only come through a variety of occasions. Moreover they had been exposed to some actual wrong information.