There are so many things you can do with the subject of lying. A few are included in this sheet, but others include recording / videoing students lying and using reported speech to talk about which utterances are lies and which are true. You might want to combine that with this sheet.

Give out the worksheet and instruct students to talk together for a few minutes about one or two of the topics at the top of the page. Then, after a few minutes, stop them and ask how they can tell if somebody is lying.

After a short discussion, which hopefully will include some of the ideas on this sheet, draw their attention to the list of tips on the page. Tell them to read through the suggestions and to match the bold phrases to the explanations in the grid at the bottom of the page. Hopefully, there is enough context information in the sentences for them to achieve this without reaching for their dictionaries.

At this point you could try actually using the suggestions to spot (realitively harmless lies). Ask students to write three sentences about themselves on a piece of paper, of which at least one should be a lie. Then when they are ready, tell them to take turns reading out their sentences after which, other students can debate whether or not a lie has occurred. With a large class, you may want to divide them into groups of four or five fro this activity.

You have a choice of two different methods of getting this handout to your printer. It all depends on whether your computer has "Adobe Acrobat Reader" installed. If it has, then this would be the recommended method for printing out the worksheet. Try selecting the "PDF (Adobe Acrobat)" link below. If all goes well, a new application window should appear including a print button, which when selected will print out one copy.

If, on the other hand you do not have "Adobe Acrobat" select the "HTML (web page)" link below. (Also, this method is recommended for users of Netscape Navigator, which seems to have trouble interacting with the Acrobat program like this.) If all goes well, a new browser window will open, from which you can either click the "print button" on the toolbar or open the "File" menu, select "Print" and then adjust the "Print Dialog Box" to your own preferences.

The final link below is to enable you to print this "instruction page" if you want to. Click on the link, and when the page appears on a new screen you will be able to print it using the browser's "print button" or "file menu". After printing, close the window again so that you can continue to navigate around the site.

For teacher training courses, English courses in Bristol UK and free interactive exercises, visit The Language Project Website.