Mother tongues.
Most of the students were from the Western Province where the Abaluhya tribe predominates, though a sizable minority were Luos from the next province. The Abaluhya are a mixed group whose mother tongue is a series of dialects, some more and some less mutually intelligible.) For language purposes the groups also mixed students from these linguistic groups in order to encourage communication through English rather than in the mother tongue, at least in English class time. (In Kololo where there was a greater variety of mother tongues the groups were more diverse and included Asians (Gujaratis, Punjabis and others), Baganda, Acholi, and other groups working together).

Introducing the Activities
The next stage was introducing the new students to the activities we wished them to do. The first of these was introduction. Each student was asked to write about himself. The pieces were passed round to the other members of the group, establishing the rule that all writing was to be read by other students before, or instead of, being seen by a teacher.

The second of the initial activities was reading. Each student chose a library book (from one of the simplified series then available) and was told that this was to be read in a week. Time was allowed in the first week for reading during class time, establishing that one of the permitted activities during English time was reading. Then they were asked to write about the book. It became clear that few of the students had had exclusive use of a book before. Many described first the colour of the cover and various other external attributes. This showed the amount of familiarisation which was required before they could be expected to be able to make use of books for information and pleasure. But also, subsequent experience showed that within very few weeks this basic familiarity had been established and the contents of the books became of interest to them. Thus the importance of establishing a reading habit was introduced from the first week. Reading the library books was essential for the students as the main source of new language in the absence of a conventional course book.

The next activity introduced was one of the principle writing activities, the Group Newspaper. This was to be a pasted up collection of short writing pieces on news. Brief explanations from the teachers on what was news, and the chance to see newspapers produced by other groups (in Kololo) were enough to set this going. This was the first of the activities requiring students to work together as a group, so that the idea of a person in charge, the editor, was introduced. This activity introduced the ideas of revision, rewriting, passing round writing and group decision about accepting a piece for publication. When the newspapers were finished, and were put on display the idea of writing for other readers became established. Letter-writing to other groups to comment on publications established the idea of student feedback as a replacement or supplement for teachers' comment.