Truth or Lie is an activity which is used to practice the Present Perfect Simple and also giving students practicing making questions.

Preparation

Prepare a number of flashcards on which you have written a present perfect simple question, have you ever…

• Have you ever met someone famous?
• Have you ever stayed awake all night?
• Have you ever played poker?

The questions should, of course, be of the right age and level for your class. Try and make them as interesting but as possible as you can.

Although you can prepare these questions, you can also turn this part of the activity into an exercise for your class. You can explain to them the kind of question you are after and then in small groups they can prepare the questions themselves for use in a later lesson.

As well as the questions, you’ll also need enough dice so that when you divide the class into small groups you they can each have one.

Pre-Teaching

Go over the formation of the present perfect simple and how to form questions then ask and answer a few questions with your class so they all understand how to form and use both.

Next, take a card at random and let everyone see it. For example:

Have you ever appeared on television?

Now, roll the dice and hide the result. Explain to the class that if it’s ODD then you will answer with a lie but if it’s EVEN you’ll answer with the truth (you can write these up on the board so they’ll all remember). Your students need to find out if you’re telling the truth or lying.

Suppose you roll a 3. You might then answer (assuming you have never been on television):

Yes, I have.

Now the class is open to ask you other questions about your answer. They can ask anything and you can answer however you want (i.e. a truth or a lie).

S: Which program was it?
T: I was on the news at home; I’d seen an accident and the local television news asked me about it.
S: What was the accident?
T: A truck had gone out of control and crashed into a furniture shop. Fortunately it was quite early in the morning and no one was hurt.
S: Which channel was it?
T: Just the local new channel. They showed the interview that evening.

When a few questions have been asked, the class must decide if you’re telling the truth or lying. Then you can reveal the score on the dice.

Running the Activity

Once the class have understood the way in which the activity works, you can break them into small groups of 4 or so. Give each group a pile of questions (face down in the middle of the table) and a dice. In turns, one person will turn over a card so all the group can see it and then they’ll roll the dice behind their hand so no one can see it. The others in the group ask the questions and work out whether the answer to the card is truth or lie.

Useful Links

Present Perfect Simple‏‎ in English Grammar – how to form and use it

Questions‏‎ in English Grammar – about making questions in English