What is it?
A survey can take the form of questionnaires or group discussions. You use them for example when you want to learn whether an aspect of your teaching is effective, to get feedback on something new you are trying, or to measure learner understanding of a teaching point. Surveys help you to find out about your learners’, attitudes, feelings and interests. They also help to encourage learners to reflect on their classroom experiences.

How to do it

Questionnaires
Be specific about what you need to find out. Make sure your learners know why you are doing the survey.

Decide which language to use – will your learners understand if you write the questions in English? Would it be more effective if you used the mother tongue?

Keep individual responses private.

Questions can be open-ended, multiple choice or a mix of both. The advantages of open-ended questions are that you will get more informative responses. The disadvantage of these questions is that it can take a long time to analyze them. The advantage of multiple-choice questionnaires is that you get very specific answers which are easier to analyze, the disadvantage is that you may miss out on important information. Using a combination such as in the example below can help to ensure that you get all the information you need, but in a manageable format.

See below for an example of a questionnaire where a teacher sought feedback on an activity.

Analyze the results of your questionnaire.  How many learners were positive about the activity?  Where were the problems?  What will you do differently next time?  Ask your learners what they felt about doing the questionnaires

Group discussion
Prepare questions as for the questionnaire.

Sit in a group with your learners – either the whole glass or different groups of learners at different times.

If you prefer, you can ask learners to work through the questionnaire in groups during class-time.  You can spend time with each group or stand back and let the learners discuss the questions without your being involved.

Analyze the results.  Group discussion may provide more insights than questionnaires as there are opportunities for learners to express their opinions more fully.  Again, ask your learners for their reactions to providing feedback in this way.

Attachment	Size
Sample questionnaire	29.5 KB

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