Health Questionnaire

Setup

Students can create their questionnaire individually or with a partner.

The questions will be multiple choice, with points for each answer depending on how healthy it is. Below is an example of the format:

How often do you exercise?
a) Never – 0
b) Rarely – 1
c) Once a week – 3
d) More than once a week – 5

Activity

1. Elicit some possible question topics related to health, e.g. exercise, food, sleep etc.
2. Write an example question on the board to demonstrate the format.
3. Students write five (beginner) or ten (intermediate) questions relating to healthy and unhealthy habits. If working in pairs, both students must write a copy of the questionnaire.
4. When they have finished, the students mingle and ask multiple different classmates their questions (if working in pairs they should split up for this). They should write down the respondent’s name next to each answer that is given.
5. The students sit down again and total up the points for each student they asked.
6. Each student/pair takes turns sharing some results from their survey. For example, what the most common answers were, and the students who scored the most points (and so are the healthiest according to them).

Target Language

The Health Questionnaire ESL activity is perfect for a class on health with beginner or low intermediate students. Students will use vocabulary related to this topic in their questions.

You could also use it to practise adverbs of frequency. In this case all the questions should be of the form How often do you…, and the answers a mix of short and long adverbs of frequency. Make sure students answer in complete sentences to practise the grammar structure, including the correct position of the different types of adverb.

For a very similar activity that is more focused on describing the results than the topic itself, see Class Survey.