A Nice Lesson - Lies (pre-intermediate)

This activity worked well with my pre-Intermediate group yesterday.

I walked into class smiling a little more intensely than usual and made sure that I made eye contact with all students. I didn’t say anything but showed through facial expressions that something wonderful must have just happened to me. The one of the students asked questioned me.

“Why are you smiling?”

I wrote this verbatim on the board.

“I’ve just been given some good news”, I replied.

“What, teacher?” was the response.

I then put the students into groups and they had to think of 5 reasons why I was so happy.

We did feedback and lots of new language emerged. This was written around a “new vocabulary” spider diagram on the board and drilled with emphasis on stressed syllables and rhythm.

I then informed the students that they were not even close in their answers.

I revealed to them that I had just won the lottery and asked them if they believed me. None did. After this I elicited the word “lie”. Students were then put into group and labeled A & B. The A group had to think reasons why lying is wrong and B for a situation where it is permissible. After feedback and discussion of emergent language, students have 1 minute ‘power’ debates about lying, mingling around the room.

The next stage of the lesson saw students writing a lie of their own in their notebooks. These where then read aloud and ‘auctioned’ with each student betting with a fictitious $100.

I then discussed with the group which lie was the most imaginative. Once the groups decided on one lie one student was given the pen to write a dictated version of the lie on the board. Only L2 can be used at this stage, including students’ instructions and corrections.

I then elicited some error corrections, when through the lie and then rubbed it off the board.

Students then had to recreate the lie in L1 with a partner. Once this was done, groups had to work together to re-create the L2 lie on the board.

Students then checked their answer from a Word document on my computer.

Homework was to write a listing order paragraph about why lying is wrong.