1. A survey about communities

2. What is a survey?
A survey is an instrument which allows a person to gather a certain type of information. It often consists of a questionnaire which is answered by a number of the people who are considered the target population of the topic being investigated. There are different types of surveys and reasons for using surveys – our objective is to use a survey to collect information about people’s relationships with their local community.

3. Why?
This mini-project will help us become more conscious about how we interact with the people and places in our surroundings. It will also help you manipulate language structures (vocabulary and grammar) in real communication and investigation.

4. The construction of a survey
For our activity, we will use closed questions. You will write yes/no questions where the interviewee has to choose an answer from four options.
Before writing your questions, look at some examples of surveys on the internet and how they are designed.

5. Activity instructions
In class:
With a partner, brainstorm ideas that you can include in a survey to find out information about people’s knowledge of/ relationship with their local community.
Compose 15 questions to include in the survey and decide on an appropriate range of answers for each question. Use the language structures explained in unit 8.
Swap your questions with another pair and give and receive feedback about the use of language and the type of questions.
Outside class:
Apply the survey to at least 10 people (in pairs) in the university. Do not give the questionnaire to the interviewee, ask them each question and have them choose from the available answers. The application should be interactive and in English. Do not apply your survey to someone who has already answered it once.

6. Activity instructions
In the following class:
Synthesise the information and draw general conclusions about the topic.
Create a poster with the following information:
An explanation of the concept of community.
The findings of your mini-investigation in the form of charts and textual comments.
What you consider are the implications of your findings.

7. Grading criteria
This survey and the poster will be graded as a mini-project. The grading parameters are as follows: Language use – question structure, vocabulary use, specific grammar – articles and quantifiers Completeness – did you write the 15 questions and corresponding answers? Did you apply the survey to 10 people? Did you create a poster with the required specifications?