Spotting Lies: Explanation

Spotting Lies

• Details

Name of Item	Don't You Believe me?
Activity Type	Vocabulary / Discussion
Student Level	Intermediate / Upper Intermediate
Time Allowance	15 - 25 minutes
Preparation Required	Nothing special
Other Items Needed	Nothing Special
Vocabulary	hesitate / pitch / a dead giveaway / pace of delivery / feel the need to / anxiety / facial colouring / eye contact
Grammar	Nothing special

• Instructions

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.