Two truths and a lie

Objective & content

By the end, B1- pupils can say true and invented things about their own lives with the present perfect of experience and the past simple (I've been to Spain. I went skiing last winter.), and question a classmate to check them: Really? Have you really ...? The bank is 13 projectable slides: a how-to slide with an example, then 12 topic cards (my holidays, my family, things I can do, food, school, animals, sport, music, places I've been, when I was little, weekends, strange but true), each with a picture that only shows an example, three sentence starters and three numbered places for the sentences.

Pedagogical guide

Use it as a five-minute warm-up for speaking about real experience. Pupils want to fool the class, so they build sentences carefully, and the class has a real reason to listen and ask questions. The starters mix the present perfect for experience without a date and the past simple for a dated event, so the contrast comes up naturally. The picture is only an example: pupils talk about their own lives. The slides are interchangeable: two or three per lesson.

Suggested procedure

1. (1 min) Show the how-to slide. The teacher plays a first round about their own life.
2. (1 min) Show one card. Pupils think of three sentences on the topic, two true and one false.
3. (3 min) A pupil says the three sentences, the class asks one question each, then votes for the lie. The pupil says which one it was.

Adaptations

• [S] Pupils write their three sentences first and read them out, or play in pairs before playing with the class.
• [A] Ban the starters: pupils make their own sentences, and the class must ask a follow-up question with When ...? or How ...? before voting.

Materials & prerequisites

A projector or screen; the bank is a 16:9 PDF, one slide per page, with no printing needed. Assumes the present perfect for experience and the past simple, including common irregular verbs.