This was an article in English Teaching Professional and part of a book proposal back in my ambitious and dynamic days. Now I’ve turned into a more typically unambitious and undynamic TEFLer, you get it here on TEFLtastic for free instead. Most ideas also good for GTKY.

There are only so many times a student can say ‘I’ve been to America’ until everyone in class already knows and saying it ceases to be real communication. The best solution is, of course, lying! All the games below also have the ultimate element of classroom communication – asking each other questions.

1. Only in my dreams

Description: Some students answer questions about a real experience, whilst others improvise a made up story. The students asking the questions must guess if each story is true or false.

Organisation: Groups of 3 or 4

Time: 15 to 20 minutes

Materials and preparation: 1 role card per student, half of which just say “Tell the truth” and the other half of which have a selection of experiences that the students are unlikely to have had, e.g. “Diving with sharks” or “Skiing out of a helicopter”.

Procedure:

1) Choose a very unusual holiday, real or imaginary, and write it on the board,- e.g. ‘My last holiday: I went big game hunting in Africa’. Tell students they can ask you 10 questions about it. If they need prompting, write question words up and elicit one question for each.

2) Answer all 10 questions, then ask them if they think you are telling the truth. Tell them whether you are.

3) Give out one role card per student. Give time for students to remember their real holiday or picture their imaginary ones (depending on which card they were given).

4) Divide the class into groups and nominate a person in each group to be questioned first. After 10 questions, the other students guess whether the story was true.

5) Feedback as a class about what the most interesting real and imaginary holidays were.

This game can also be used for:

Present Simple (I always drink goat’s milk), Present Continuous/ Family and friends (My father is flying to NY as we speak), Present Perfect Continuous (I’ve been learning French since I was two), the Arts (I’ve seen all of Shakespeare’s plays), Education, Hobbies, and Abilities (I can drive a truck).

2. 40% Lies

Description: Students try to work out which 2 of 5 statements are not true by asking questions

Organisation: Groups of 3 or 4

Time: 15 to 30 minutes

Materials and preparation: The teacher will need to prepare 5 statements about themselves, 3 true and 2 false

Procedure: (examples given are for the topic of families)

1) Put your 5 statements up on the board, e.g.

• My sister has twins

• I have 5 sisters

• If I’d been a girl, I would’ve been called Gaby

• My family never had any pets

• I don’t want children

2) Ask students how many they think are false. Tell them there are two. Tell them they have to work out which by asking you questions and watching your reaction (sweaty palms etc.) and seeing whether your story ties together (e.g. forgetting the names of your 5 sisters)

3) Let them ask questions until they have decided which ones they believe. Ask each student which two they think are false. Tell them the real answer.

4) Discuss why they decided on the ones they did and why they were/ weren’t fooled.

5) Ask students to write down similar statements for themselves – 3 true and 2 false.

6) Divide them into groups and repeat as above with one person from the group being questioned by the others.

Variation: For a class with no imagination, you can prepare the 2 false ones for each student.

Extension: Students tell the class what they learnt about each other

Can also be used for:

All the language points in ‘Only in my dreams’ above

 

3. The student who couldn’t say ‘No’

Description: Students answer ‘Yes’ to all the questions they are asked. The other students ask 3 more questions after each ‘Yes’ to work out if they are lying.

Organisation: Groups of 3 or 4

Time: 20 to 30 minutes

Materials and preparation: Zero, or one pack of cards with words to prompt questions per group

Procedure: (all the examples given are for Present Perfect)

1) Take one of the cards (e.g. “Seen”) and write the word on the board. Brainstorm Yes/ No questions using this word (e.g. “Have you ever seen a dolphin?”)

2) Choose the most unusual question. Get a student to ask you the question and answer ‘Yes, I have’, whether it is true or not.

3) Ask students whether they believe you. They can ask you three more (Wh) questions to decide whether they believe you or not (by spotting your facial ticks etc) before they have to guess if it is actually so or not.

4) If students need prompting, brainstorm additional questions onto the board (e.g. “Where did you see Big Foot?”) and let students choose three.

5) After the three Wh questions, ask students whether they believe you and tell them if they are right or not

6) Split the class into groups and give a pack of cards to each, or ask them just to make their own Yes/ No questions using the language point of the day.

7) One student takes a card and shows it to the group. The other students ask them one Yes/ No question. They must reply ‘Yes’. The other students ask 3 additional questions and guess whether that person was lying. If no one guessed correctly, the person who was answering the questions keeps the card and scores one point.

8) The next person takes a card or just answers as Yes/ No question, and the game continues.

Can also be used for:

Possessions (Have you got a car?), Simple Past (Did you watch the film on Channel 3 yesterday?), medical vocab (Have you ever broken your leg?), house and home vocab (Do you have a Jacuzzi in your bathroom?), phrasal verbs (Do you generally put things off as long as you can?), love vocab, personality vocab (Did you do anything generous last week?), music vocabulary, second conditionals, modals of obligation and permission (Could you leave your food if you didn’t like it when you were a child?), adverbs (Do you always walk quickly?), do and make, passives (Have you ever been mugged?), relative clauses (Do you have something that massages you while you watch the TV?), and opinions

An earlier version of this article was originally published in English Teaching Professional magazine. Republished with permission of the publisher and author – i.e. just because I can reproduce my own article doesn’t mean you can copy it onto your site too. So there!