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True Lies
Time Expression Cards

On Sunday
morning

Last month

One hour ago

Last Friday

On Saturday
evening

Last year

A week ago

This morning

Two days ago

Yesterday

On my birthday

When I was
twelve

At Christmas

On Sunday
afternoon

In 2000

On Saturday
morning

In 2014

Last week

Last night

At the
weekend

Verb Cards

do

watch

tidy

go

use

buy

write

travel

meet

be

drink

phone

live

see

have

start

leave

take

play

get

Teach-This.com 2015 Permission granted to reproduce for classroom use.

TEACH-THIS.COM
True Lies
Here is an amusing guessing game that helps students practice making positive and
negative past simple sentences, and past simple questions.
Before class, make one copy of the cards for each group of four and cut as indicated. Keep
the two sets of cards separate.
Procedure
Tell the students that they are going to make sentences about things they did or didnt do in
the past. Explain that the other members of the group must decide whether they are telling
the truth or not.
Demonstrate the activity by saying to the students: Last night, I watched a film on TV.
Elicit questions from the students to help them decide whether you are lying or telling the
truth, e.g. What film did you watch? What was the story about? What channel was it on?
Ask the students if they think you are telling the truth or not. Then reveal the correct answer.
Next, divide the students into groups of four.
Give each group a set of time expression cards and verb cards. Students will also need
some paper for keeping score.
Tell the students to shuffle and place the time expression cards face down on the desk, and
then do the same with the verb cards.
Students then take it in turns to pick up a time expression card and a verb card. The student
then makes a positive or negative past simple sentence using the words on the card.
The other students in the group ask questions to see if they think the student is telling the
truth or not.
After asking a few questions, the other students say if they think the student is telling the
truth or lying.
The student then reveals the correct answer.
Students who guessed correctly win a point.
Then, the next student picks up two cards and so on.
This continues until all the cards have been used.
The student with the highest number of points at the end is the winner.

Teach-This.com 2015 Permission granted to reproduce for classroom use.