Result of the research

Based on questionnaires from teachers and students and classroom observations, the activities used by teachers of English language in their lessons included dramatization, discussion, debating, impromptu speeches, story- telling, role play, dialogue, oral narratives, , poems recitation, songs and tongue twisters. What differed was the mode of delivery and preferences as shown by frequency of use of the class activities.

Fourteen teachers (100%) indicated that they use different classroom activities depending on the situation. The most preferred classroom activity among the teachers was discussion used by 92.9% of teachers, dramatization (85.7%), songs (78.6%), impromptu speeches and tongue twisters each (71.4%). Moderately preferred activities included short stories and role play (64.3%), debating and poem recitation each (57.1%). The less preferred activity was oral drills (42.9%).
The study also established that teachers used many recommended integrated classroom activities including dramatization, discussion, debating, dialogues, role play, impromptu speeches, tongue twisters, oral drills and poem recitation, but to various degrees (Table 1). This study found out that teachers preferred some combinations compared to others. The most preferred combination by teachers consisted of dramatization,
discussion, debating and dialogues which 50% of teachers used in classroom activities, followed by dramatization, discussion and role-play (14.3%). The rest of the activity combinations were less preferred but nonetheless used by at least one teacher. However, short stories, oral narratives, language games and songs combination were not used at all by any teacher.

According to the student responses, the most widely used classroom activities included discussion which was confirmed by 88.9% of the students, story-telling (82.7%) and poem recitation (82.9%). Other activities that are moderately used include dramatization confirmed by 69.4% of students, debating (67.1%), songs (56.7%), tongue twisters (58.3%) and role play (53.6%). According to the respondents, impromptu speeches (37.3%) and oral drills (35.3%) are rarely used.

One major observation was that classroom activities were carried by teachers in varying degrees. Discussion was more popular than oral drills in all school categories. In general, teachers in the National school were able to integrate several classroom activities within a lesson for instance dialogues, discussions, impromptu speeches and role play as opposed to provincial and district schools. Provincial school teachers used question and answer sessions, whole class discussion and group discussions. In the District school category, whole class discussion and story-telling were the mostly used classroom activities and students were noisy in their discussion groups. Although, observed lessons revealed that most teachers across the school categories used discussion comprising of whole class discussion, group discussion and pair discussion, in some cases learners code switched to use Kiswahili and Sheng in their group discussions.

In general, teachers tried to integrate at least two classroom activities within a single lesson to achieve integration of the four skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing). It was also observed that teachers chose an activity within a combination without using all the integrated activities. The emphasis though was however on listening and the students only spoke when answering the questions asked by their teachers. It was also observed that reading was only done by the teacher as students listened. Students were not properly given chances to practice their speaking and reading skills.

Where story-telling was used as classroom activity, only one to two students got the opportunity to tell a story before the end of a lesson and only one activity was undertaken throughout the lesson. In some observed lessons, oral narratives were also used to teach students but teachers tended to employ whole class discussion with less opportunity for students to tell their own oral narratives to enhance their speaking skills and sub-skills such as non-verbal cues, stress, intonation and fluency.

In all the lessons observed, there was no language game and songs used, even though in the questionnaire students and teachers indicated that these were used to some extent. The songs only came out in oral narratives. In some schools teachers provided enough time for practice for example in situations where teachers taught intonation as an initiated activity of pair practice using model sentences. During such lessons it was noted that some students could not even pronounce the sounds in words written on the board let alone reading them. Teachers in all school categories were able to integrate the four main language skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) in a single lesson which enabled the skills to complement each other.