STEP-BY-STEP PROJECTS 1

UNITS 5&6 Do a food survey

1 Work in pairs. Answer the questions. Then read the Introduction to check your answers.
1 What happens in a survey?
2 What topics are surveys often about?
3 What happens to the information from a survey?

Introduction
A survey is a set of questions that you ask a large number of people.
A survey is usually about a specific topic such as shopping, free-
time activities, or local issues. The questions in a survey are usually
about people’s opinions, their preferences, and their habits. By asking
the same questions to a lot of people, researchers can analyze
the answers and present the results as data. Then they can make
decisions based on that data.

2 Work in groups. Follow the steps to do your own survey. Take turns making notes.

Step 1 Choose a topic for your survey Step 2 Write the questions
■ Make a list of possible food topics – school food, ■ Choose different types of questions to ask:
healthy food choices, snacks … ■ multiple-choice questions
■ Choose the topic you all think is most interesting. ■ yes/no questions
What do you want to find out in your survey? ■ open-ended questions
■ Discuss the types of questions you could ask. ■ Give group members questions to write. Write the
Think about opinions, preferences, and habits. survey questions.
Let’s do a survey about healthy food choices.

Why don’t we do a survey about snacks?

SNACK
SURVEY
That’s a good / a great / an interesting
idea.

We can find out what snacks people eat.

We could ask how much they spend on snacks. 1 Do you eat snacks at
school? Yes / No
I’d like to know the class’s favorite snack.

How about asking them when they have snacks? 2 Which of these snacks do you prefer?
a) chocolate bar
b) potato chips
c) fruit
d) other
(please specify)

3 How much money do you

spend on snacks each
week?

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© Macmillan Publishers Limited 2015. This sheet may be photocopied and used within the class.
STEP-BY-STEP PROJECTS 1
UNITS 5&6 Do a food survey

Step 3 Interview other students Step 5 Give a presentation

■ Make a list of all the students in the class. ■ Present your survey and the results to the rest of
■ Choose a method to do the survey: the class.
a) Each member of the group interviews different ■ Watch the other groups present their surveys. React
students. to the information.
or ■ Discuss the surveys. Which is the most interesting?
b) Each member asks a different question to the rest Why?
of the class. In our survey we asked students about eating
■ Do the survey. Introduce yourself and explain your
snacks. We discovered that 95 percent of people eat
survey. snacks at school.
Then interview the students and make a note of their
answers.
I’m doing a survey about snack Wow! That’s fantastic!
foods.
Really? I don’t believe it!
Can I ask you some questions?

That’s amazing!
I’d like to start by asking you a question about money.
I liked the survey about meals at home.
Is there anything else you’d like to say or add? It’s interesting to know that the class’s
favorite meal is lunch.
Thank you very much for your help.

Step 4 Analyze the results

■ In your group, look at the answers to the survey
questions. What do they tell you?
What did you discover?
■ Prepare to present the results of your survey to the
rest of the class. Make sure each member of the
group has something to do in the presentation:
■ describe the survey and results
■ use pie charts and/or graphs to present some of
the results

14 people (70 percent of the class) eat snacks at school.

A lot of students eat snacks during the morning break.
Most students prefer eating potato chips over other
snacks run in. The majority of students spend more than
10 dollars each week on snacks. One student never eats
any snacks.

potato chips
chocolate bars

other

fruit

This page has been downloaded from www.macmillangobeyond.com

2
© Macmillan Publishers Limited 2015. This sheet may be photocopied and used within the class.