Questions to Ask Pen Pals
Questions for pen pals writing across countries, including school and classroom exchanges. Aimed at everyday life rather than facts you could look up: what people eat, how they get to school, what the slang is, and what they think about your country.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What is the first place you would take me if I turned up at your door?
Why ask it
A good opening question because it is easy and revealing at once. The choice is often somewhere unremarkable to them and fascinating to you, and it gives you a specific thing to ask about in the next letter.
What is your town known for, fairly or unfairly?
Why ask it
The unfairly is the useful half. Every place has a reputation its residents dispute, and hearing that argument teaches you more about the local mood than a description of landmarks.
What does a normal school or work day look like where you are?
Why ask it
Start and finish times, subjects, uniforms, breaks, and how much homework arrives. Differences between countries here are large and surprising to both sides, so answer it about your own day too.
How do you get around, and how long does it take you?
Why ask it
Buses, bikes, a long walk, or a lift from a parent. It quietly reveals distance, cost, safety, and independence, none of which anyone answers directly if you ask about them.
What time do people eat dinner, and who does the cooking?
Why ask it
Two small questions with a lot inside them: household structure, working hours, and whose job cooking is. The timing differences alone are often the first thing that surprises a class doing an exchange.
What is usually on the table at a family meal?
Why ask it
More useful than asking about national dishes, because it gets what people actually eat on a Tuesday. Ask what they eat when nobody can be bothered to cook, which is where the honest answer lives.
Which holiday matters most where you are, and what do people actually do on it?
Why ask it
The second half prevents an encyclopaedia answer. What people actually do usually involves specific food, a lot of relatives, and something slightly ridiculous, which is the part worth exchanging.
What is a slang word or phrase from your area that would confuse an outsider?
Why ask it
Reliably fun and reliably specific to place, since slang varies between towns as much as between countries. Send a couple of your own back, along with what they literally translate to.
What music is everyone listening to where you are right now?
Why ask it
The word now matters, since it asks about the present rather than about classics or national traditions. It also gives you something you can actually go and listen to, which few written answers do.
What do people your age argue with their parents about?
Why ask it
The universal and the local sit side by side in this answer: phones and curfews everywhere, plus something specific to the place. It tends to be the question that convinces both sides they have things in common.
What is expensive where you live, and what is surprisingly cheap?
Why ask it
Concrete and comparable, and one of the few ways to talk about money without being intrusive. Fruit, transport, phone data, and rent produce genuinely startling differences between countries.
What is the weather doing today, and what does that change about your day?
Why ask it
The second clause turns a dull question into a useful one. Answers about closed schools, flooded roads, or nobody going outside for three months tell you what the climate actually means there.
Which sport or team does everyone around you follow?
Why ask it
Worth asking even if you have no interest in sport, because the answer maps local loyalties and rivalries. Ask what happens in the town when the team wins, which is where the real description comes.
What is something in your house that I probably would not have in mine?
Why ask it
An object question, which is easier to answer than a culture question and produces better letters. Common answers involve heating, cooling, water, food storage, and religious or family items.
What is a story or song that every child where you live knows?
Why ask it
Gets at the shared background that people forget is local until someone asks. It works particularly well in classroom exchanges, since a whole class can compare their answers.
What do people where you live think about my country, and what do they get wrong?
Why ask it
Braver than it looks, and usually answered generously. You will hear the version of your country that travels through television and news, which is worth knowing and often uncomfortable.
What surprised you most in my last letter?
Why ask it
Turns the exchange into a conversation rather than two parallel monologues. It also shows you which of your ordinary details are the interesting ones, which is hard to guess from your own side.
What do you do during school holidays?
Why ask it
Holiday length and what fills it vary enormously: work, travel, family obligations, or long empty weeks. It is also a practical question, since it tells you when letters are likely to slow down.
If you came here, what would you want to see or do?
Why ask it
Gives you a way to send something useful back, whether that is a photograph, a leaflet, or a description of somewhere they named. Their list is also a good measure of what they already believe about your country.
What should I be asking you that I have not thought of?
Why ask it
Closes on their expertise about their own life. The gap they name is often something structural, like how school works or how families are arranged, that an outsider would never think to ask.
Writing Across Countries
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Making the Exchange Work
Answer your own question too
Ask what time they eat dinner and then say what time you do. A one-sided questionnaire feels like homework, while a comparison invites a longer reply and gives them something to be curious about.
Aim at the ordinary
Bus routes, breakfast, homework, and what the shops near you sell are more interesting to a foreign reader than monuments and national holidays. Anything they could read about online is the least useful thing you can send.
Write plainly if you are not sharing a first language
Short sentences, no idioms you would have to explain, and a note that they are welcome to ask what anything means. If they are writing in a second language, do not correct it unless they ask you to.
Enclose something flat
A postcard, a map of your town, a bus ticket, a supermarket receipt, a photograph of your street on an ordinary day. These answer questions about daily life better than paragraphs do, and they cost almost nothing to post.
Keep two or three questions per letter
A page of questions gets one-line answers to each. Two good ones and a paragraph of your own news will keep the exchange running for a year.
Common Pitfalls
- Treating one person as a spokesperson for a whole country. Ask what happens in their house and their town, not what their nation believes.
- Asking questions built on an assumption, such as which church they go to or whether they have snow. Ask the open version instead.
- Sending a list of questions with no news of your own. It reads as an assignment and gets a short reply.
- Raising politics, war, religion, or income in a first exchange. If those subjects come up later, follow their lead on how far to go.
- Assuming a long silence means disinterest. International post is slow and unreliable, and school terms interrupt classroom exchanges for weeks.
Practical and Safety Notes
- Children and teenagers should write through a school programme or an established organization, using the school or organization address rather than a home one.
- Never send money, bank details, or documents, regardless of the story attached to the request. This is the most common way these arrangements are exploited.
- Check customs rules before enclosing food, seeds, plants, or liquids. Many countries prohibit them and the whole parcel can be destroyed.
- Weigh the envelope. International rates rise sharply with weight, and thin paper genuinely changes the cost.
- Date every letter and consider numbering them, since post can arrive out of order or not at all.
- For a classroom exchange, agree with the partner teacher on a schedule, a rough letter length, and who reads letters before they are sent.