Can you always trust what a graph is telling you? We tend to think of numbers and statistics as objective and reliable, but the way data is presented can have a huge influence on how we interpret it. A graph can use completely accurate numbers and still give us a misleading impression.
With October 20th, World Statistics Day, I thought it would be a great opportunity to explore this idea with B2 learners. And there was an extra reason to choose this topic this month: this lesson was voted the winner of this month’s free lesson plan! Thank you everyone who voted for it!
The lesson is based on the TED-Ed video How to Spot a Misleading Graph which looks at several ways graphs can distort the way we understand data. Students explore examples involving truck sales, unemployment, Super Bowl viewing figures and ocean temperatures, while learning useful vocabulary for talking about misleading statistics and data presentation. Rather than simply teaching students how to read a graph, the lesson encourages them to become more critical viewers of the statistics they encounter in everyday life.
So, keep scrolling for a full-length FREE B2 ESL lesson on misleading graphs and statistics, including a worksheet and presentation.
Warmer: Which One Would You Choose?
I decided not to begin by telling students that graphs and statistics can be misleading. Instead, the lesson starts with something much more familiar – advertisements. Students look at pairs of adverts for a hotel, phone and restaurant. They need to decide which option they would choose. The interesting part is that the information in each pair is presented in different ways. For example one hotel has a slightly higher rating but far fewer reviews, while two pieces of information about a product can communicate the same basic idea in very different ways. Students then compare their choices and disucss whether they way information is presented affected their decisions.
Listening for Gist: How Can a Graph Mislead Us?
Students are introduced to the TED-Ed video How to Spot a Misleading Graph. For the first viewing, students don’t need to understand every detail. Instead, they match four examples from the video with the reason each one was misleading. The task introduces four important ideas from the video – distorting the scale, choosing particular time periods, leaving out important information, and failing to provide enough context.
Listening for Detail: What Does the Speaker Say?
Students watch the video again and complete notes with missing words and phrases. I wanted this activity to do more than simply check comprehension, so it also introduces vocabulary that students will use later in the lesson. Some of the key expressions include exaggerate, distort, taper off and cherry-picking. The examples from the video make the voabulary particularly useful because students can see how to use these words to describe real graphs and data rather than learning them as isolated definitions.
Vocabulary Focus: Talking About Misleading Statistics
Look back at the words and phrases they wrote down while listening and work out their meanings from definitions. This gives students a chance to retrieve the vocabulary from the listening before using it themselves. They then complete a second activity in which they use the vocabulary in new sentences.
Speaking: Graph Detective
Then, it’s time for students to become Graph Detectives. Students work in groups and examine three different graphs. Each one has something that could give the viewer a misleading impression, but I don’t tell students what it is. Instead, they need to use the ideas from the video and the vocabulary from the previous exercises to analyse the graphs themselves. The important thing here is that students aren’t just identifying what’s wrong. They have to explain how the presentation of the data affects the way we interpret it.
Speaking & Production: Make the Numbers Talk!
For the final main task, students get some data and have to present it in two different ways. First, they describe the results accurately. Then, they rewrite the same information to make the results sound as impressive as possible. All while keeping every number correct! For instance, coffee shop sales that increase from 1,000 cups in January to 1,200 in May. They could accurately say that sales increased by 200 cups, or they could emphasise that sales increase by 20% in just five months. The second dataset looks at employee satisfaction, where the figures fall for several years before rising sharply in 2025. This gives students more opportunities to select which part of the data to emphasise. I really like this activity because it brings the whole lesson together. Students have spent the lesson learning how graphs and statistics can influence interpretation, and now they get to experience that process themselves.
Final Discussion: Can We Trust Statistics?
To finish, students discuss statistics in their everyday lives. They consider how often they encounter statistics, why numbers can be so persuasive, and who they trust to provide reliable statistics, from companies and governments to scientists, journalists and social media. By this point, students have already seen how easily accurate information can create a misleading impression when the scale, context, time period or selection of data is changed.
So, this World Statistics Day, why not get your students to look again? Download for free this B2 listening and vocabulary lesson that combines an engaging TED-Ed video, useful vocabulary, critical thinking, graph analysis and plenty of speaking practice. And, thanks to this month’s teacher vote, it’s also this month’s free Lessonarium lesson plan!
Do you ever question the statistics and graphs they see online, or do you usually take the numbers at face value?
