Food: Activities

Discusscion
  1. What are your five favorite dishes?
  2. What are your three favorite foreign dishes?
  3. What is your least favorite kind of food?
  4. Do you like junk food? Why or why not?
  5. What is your favorite restaurant in Taiwan?
  6. Do you like the food at your school? Why or why not?
  7. Have you ever been on a special diet?
  8. Do you like any kind of unusual food?
  9. Do you think you have a good diet or a poor diet?
  10. What is a good diet?
  11. When was the last time you overate?
  12. If you were going to a foreign country, would you take any of your favorite food with you?
  13. Do you take vitamins?
  14. Do you ever eat vegetarian food?
  15. Do you think a vegetarian diet is healthier than a diet that includes meat?
  16. Is there any specific food or drink that you feel you must have every day?
  17. How often do you eat out when you are not in school?
  18. What kind of food do you wish you could eat more often?
  19. Is there a food that you used to like but that you don't like anymore?
  20. Are there any foods that you wouldn't eat as a child but that you eat now?
  21. Are you a good cook? If so, what do you like to cook? If not, why not?
  22. Do you like American food? British food? German food? Italian food? Why or why not?
  23. Do you read the nutritional information on the foods you buy?
  24. Do you enjoy shopping for food?
  25. If you were to live overseas, what food from home would you miss the most?
Guess the dish
  1. The teacher has identified a dish and has broken it down into its ingredients.
  2. The teacher will assign each student one or more ingredients without telling the class what the dish is.
  3. Share your ingredient(s) with your classmates. As a class, try to guess what dish the teacher had in mind.

Alternate for a class of 24 (or 16, or 20...)

  1. Follow steps 1 and 2, above.
  2. For a class of 25, the teacher will put you in groups of five.
  3. In your group, share your ingredients. Write down your own and each of your partners ingredients. Try to identify what dish they can create.
  4. The teacher will now put you in a new group of five (counting of 1,2,3,4,5 in each original group, then regrouping students by numbers; "1s here, 2s over there...")
  5. In your new group, share your list of ingredients from your previous group. Your new group now has all the ingredients for the dish.
  6. Guess the dish.

Links & activities

Drinks
  • iDrink.com Alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, with an option to search only nonalcoholic drinks
  • Drink recipes from The Low Fat Vegetarian Archive, www.fatfree.com
Give instructions

In this exercise, you and your partner(s) will describe how to make a well-known dish to the rest of the class. You must not tell the class the name of the dish you are talking about. Your classmates will then guess what dish you are discussing.

  1. Get into groups of 2-3.
  2. Decide what dish you want to describe. It should be a dish that everyone can name. It can be a local or foreign dish.
  3. Together write down the steps to preparing the dish without using the name of the dish in your instructions. Use phrases such as 'this dish' instead.
  4. The teacher will circulate around the room to assure that each group is working on a unique dish, and to help you with your instructions.
  5. Break up the instructions into steps so that each of you is presenting an equal amount.
  6. When it comes time for your group to tell the class how to make the dish, you must give your instructions without using notes. Don't try to memorize your instructions word for word. Rather, try to remember the keywords for each step, such as ingredients and verbs.

Instructions for the rest of the class:

  1. Please do not interrupt the presenters to guess what they are describing. Rather, wait until they are done presenting their instructions, and then offer your guess.