ESL 111

Unit: Presidential Elections

Preliminary Activity

A "Straw Poll"

(A straw poll is an unofficial vote or poll taken to obtain a general trend of opinion on a subject)

Purposes

1. To discover depth and breadth of students' knowledge of and interest in the topic of presidential elections.

2. To activate thought and discussion about the topic

Procedure:

1. (10 minutes) In pairs, think of a question dealing with the American presidential elections you can ask your fellow students. Make the question as specific as possible (multiple choice). Possible areas for questions: the election system, the candidates, the issues involved...

2) (15 minutes) When you have devised a question, you will then divide up and conduct a poll of the other students. Be sure to keep a careful count of the answers you receive.

3) (5 minutes) When you have concluded your poll, join your partner again and tabulate your results in percentages (i.e. "50% of those polled knew what a primary election was, 26% had heard of a primary but did not know what it was, 16% had never heard of a primary, 8% had no opinion.").

4. (15 minutes) Report your findings to the class.

c:\111\themes\election\poll.doc