Why English? | Asking Comparable Questions in a Fictional Alibi Game

Two students describe the same imaginary afternoon. One says they left the art room together at 2.20. The other says they left together at 2.15. That difference is worth checking. But if one describes the paper as green and the other calls it pale green, the two answers may fit perfectly well.

An Alibi game can make English speaking practice lively while giving questions a real job. Learners ask about past events, compare answers and decide what a difference actually means. English matters because a useful question must identify the same event for both speakers, and a useful comparison must preserve what each person really said.

This guide offers an original, gentle classroom adaptation with a fictional timetable, sample questions, answer records and a careful debrief. It is not advice about real investigations or a method for detecting lies. Its focus is language: asking comparable questions, describing time accurately and keeping a conclusion within the evidence supplied by a made-up game.

Establish the game and its boundaries first

The British Council’s Games in the classroom programme and its teacher support worksheet include Alibi as an activity in which students answer questions about a shared account. The resource connects it with question forms and past-tense practice. The following scenario is our own adaptation, not the worksheet’s story.

Here, a paper festival sign has been moved in an invented school. Nobody has committed a real offence, nobody is being accused outside the fiction, and no student has to reveal where they actually were. The characters are Tessa and Noor, not disguised versions of classmates. Any learner may choose an observer role instead of performing a character.

The game goal is to identify whether the two fictional accounts agree about a specified event. Do not label players honest or dishonest. A mismatched answer is material for a language discussion, not a reason to embarrass someone. Keep the playful setting, but make the learning conditions clear.

The adult leading the activity should say these boundaries aloud before the first question. A friendly introduction cannot undo a threatening surprise halfway through a game. Everyone should know that mistakes, pauses and requests for clarification are allowed.

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Read the original afternoon scenario

In our fictional story, a festival sign is moved from the display table at 2.10 in the afternoon. Tessa and Noor say they were in the art room preparing folded cards during that period. The movement of the sign is only a story prompt. The exercise will not establish who moved it.

The two character players study this shared plan before answering separately. The question team does not see the plan until the comparison is complete. The teacher or parent keeps a copy so that the invented events can be checked afterwards.

Time	Shared plan for Tessa and Noor	Detail available to both players
2.00	Enter the art room together	They carry a flat pack of green card
2.05	Begin folding cards	Both work at the round table
2.10	Continue folding cards	They are still at the table
2.15	Put finished cards into a tray	The tray is beside the table
2.20	Leave the art room together	They take the tray with them

The plan does not specify what anyone ate, which shoes they wore or how many cards they finished. Those details are not secret answers. They are absent information. Players should be allowed to say that their character sheet does not provide them.

This makes the exercise different from a competition to invent the most elaborate story. Everyone can concentrate on using the supplied relationships accurately. Later, a more open improvisation can add invented details, but label that change in the rules clearly.

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Decide what the question team needs to find out

Before writing questions, name the comparison target. For this round it is the pair’s account of their location and activity at 2.10, together with the events immediately before and after it. The target is not their personalities, drawing skill or ability to respond instantly.

Useful questions include where they were, what they were doing, when they began and when they left. These questions connect to the timeline. A question about a favourite song might produce lively English, but it does not help this particular comparison unless the story gives it a relevant role.

The team can write four core questions rather than a long list of surprises. A manageable set makes it easier to ask both players the same thing and record answers accurately. Extra questions can be added only when they clarify a real uncertainty in an answer.

This is a useful moment to connect with information-gap speaking tasks. A question becomes purposeful when its answer changes what the listener can work out. Here, the new work is not merely obtaining information: it is making two accounts comparable without changing the question between speakers.

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Ask about a moment and an event differently

“What were you doing at 2.10?” asks about the activity at that moment. “When did you begin folding the cards?” asks for the beginning of an event. The expected answers have different jobs, even though both concern the same afternoon.

A fitting response to the first is, “We were folding cards at the round table.” A fitting response to the second is, “We began at 2.05.” Neither is more sophisticated simply because it is longer. Each gives the information its question requests.

Compare “When were you folding?” The player might answer with a period rather than a starting time. That is not necessarily an evasive answer. The question did not clearly ask for the start. If the team needs the start, it should say so.

Students can practise these distinctions without learning a long grammatical lecture first. Put the three questions beside the timeline and ask what each one points to. Then try another invented event, such as packing a display box. The learner sees how English question wording selects the kind of answer another person can reasonably supply.

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Keep the same event inside both interviews

Ask both character players, “At what time did you leave the art room together?” Record the answer before moving on. The words “the art room” and “together” keep the event specific. They prevent the answer from drifting to leaving school, leaving a table or leaving separately.

If the first player is asked when the pair left the room together and the second is asked when they stopped folding, different answers are not automatically a contradiction. The questions point to different events. In our plan, folding begins at 2.05, the finished cards go into the tray at 2.15, and the pair leaves at 2.20.

This is the central discipline of the activity: compare like with like. The interviewer cannot alter the meaning of the question and then blame the speakers for supplying different information. A fair comparison begins with a stable target.

For a first round, let the question team read the core questions from a sheet. Reading a prepared question is not a failure of speaking. It protects the comparison while students learn to listen to the answers. Later, invite them to create follow-up questions from the actual uncertainty they hear.

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Record answers before interpreting them

Use a two-column record, one for Tessa and one for Noor. Write short notes that preserve the answer’s meaning. If Tessa says “We left together at twenty past two,” the note “2.20, left room together” is sufficient for this game. Do not shorten it to “2.20” if several events are being discussed.

Recording and judging are separate jobs. First ask what the player said. Then ask how it compares with the other account. If a listener begins deciding whether the speaker sounds convincing while the answer is still being given, the actual wording may be lost.

When a note is unclear, check it with the speaker: “I wrote that you were still folding at 2.10. Is that your answer?” This gives the player a chance to correct a recording error. It also models a useful communication habit: confirm a consequential detail before building a conclusion on it.

The record is a classroom working sheet, not an official statement or evidence of anyone’s real behaviour. Keep it inside the fictional activity. There is no reason to attach a learner’s real identity to a list of imagined inconsistencies or display it publicly as a joke.

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Compare this first pair of answers

Tessa says, “We carried green card into the room.” Noor says, “The card was pale green.” The second answer adds a shade description. The answers can both be true within the invented story because pale green is a kind of green. The shared plan does not specify a different shade.

Now compare Tessa’s “We worked at the round table” with Noor’s “We folded the cards at a table.” Noor’s answer is less specific, but it does not contradict Tessa’s. One account contains information the other does not mention. Missing a detail is not the same as denying it.

Ask the team to explain its comparison in a complete sentence: “These answers are compatible because the less specific description does not rule out the more specific one.” A younger learner might say, “They can both mean the same card.” That is also a useful explanation.

This distinction keeps the game from rewarding overconfident accusation. Students should not win points merely for noticing that two strings of words differ. They should explain whether the difference changes the event being described. English matters in that movement from surface wording to the relationship between meanings.

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Compare a difference that really needs repair

In a practice variation, Tessa answers, “We left the art room together at 2.20.” Noor answers, “We left the art room together at 2.15.” Both answers refer to the same shared departure, and they give different exact times. As written, they cannot both match the single departure in our plan.

The next step is clarification, not a declaration about character. Ask, “Are you describing when you left the room, or when you put the cards in the tray?” Noor might have confused the two events. If so, the repair is to reconnect the time with the correct action.

If Noor keeps the answer at 2.15, the team can record a disagreement about departure time. That is a complete, defensible game conclusion. It does not establish why the answer differs. It certainly does not establish what happened to the festival sign.

When the shared plan is revealed, compare both responses with it. In this invented plan the departure is 2.20 and the tray event is 2.15. A helpful correction therefore names both events rather than merely changing a number: “At 2.15 we packed the cards; at 2.20 we left together.”

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Treat unspecified information honestly

The question team asks, “How many cards did you finish?” The plan does not say. A player can answer, “Our sheet does not give a number.” This response protects the boundary between the supplied fiction and new invention. It is not evidence of poor English.

If the group wants improvisation, set a different version of the game in which the pair may agree on extra details beforehand. Record those details in a shared plan. Otherwise one player may be expected to remember facts that the other invented only after the interviews began.

This is a useful lesson about instructions. “Use the character sheet” and “invent a convincing account” are different tasks. Neither becomes fairer by keeping the distinction hidden. Tell learners which task they are doing, what may be invented and what must remain fixed.

In ordinary schoolwork, the same care helps a student distinguish what a passage states from what they are imagining. Creative invention is valuable in the right place. In an evidence-based answer, invented detail should not quietly become a fact. The learner needs English for both jobs and a clear understanding of which job is required now.

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Use follow-up questions to locate the uncertainty

Suppose Noor says, “We were there after two.” The team needs to know whether “there” means the art room and whether the answer includes 2.10. A useful follow-up is, “Do you mean that you were in the art room at 2.10?”

Compare, “Why are you being vague?” That challenges the speaker but does not identify the missing information. It may also make the player defend a tone rather than clarify the event. The more precise question is both kinder and more productive for the language task.

Another useful follow-up separates a sequence: “Did you put the cards in the tray before or after leaving the room?” The answer should be checked against the supplied plan, not against a listener’s preferred story. In our plan, the tray event comes first.

Follow-up questions are not a licence to keep increasing pressure until someone changes an answer. Agree on a small number, allow thinking time and accept “the sheet does not say.” The learning goal is to make an uncertainty smaller, not to make a classmate uncomfortable.

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Did You Know? Agreement and truth are different questions

In this game, two players can give the same wrong time because both misread the shared plan. Their answers agree with each other but disagree with the supplied fictional record. You can see the distinction directly without drawing any conclusion about real-world investigations.

Try a controlled variation: both players say the pair entered at 2.05. The plan says they entered at 2.00 and began folding at 2.05. The team’s comparison should contain two sentences: “The accounts match on entry time. They do not match the plan’s entry time.” Those are different judgments.

The reverse also matters. One player may remember a detail and the other may say the sheet does not specify it. That does not automatically make one a truthful person and the other untruthful. Stay with the actual task: which statements agree, which conflict and which need more information?

This is why our adaptation avoids calling matching speakers innocent or mismatching speakers guilty. A classroom language game is not a real evidential process. Its useful contribution is a modest habit of reasoning: do not ask one comparison to establish a different conclusion.

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Build a short English exchange from the timeline

Interviewer: “What were you doing at 2.10?” Tessa: “We were folding cards at the round table.” Interviewer: “Had you left the room by then?” Tessa: “No. We left together at 2.20.” The exchange links the moment, activity and later departure clearly.

A learner who is not ready for the second question form can ask, “Were you still in the room at 2.10?” Keep the communicative job and adjust the language demand. There is no need to force a more complex construction merely because it appears in a model.

After the exchange, let a listener point to the relevant rows in the plan. This checks whether the spoken answers stayed attached to the intended events. Then ask the interviewer to summarise without adding details: “They say they were folding at 2.10 and left at 2.20.”

The phrase “they say” also keeps the account separate from the shared plan. Before the plan is revealed, the interviewer is reporting a character’s answer. Afterwards, the group can check that answer against the invented record. That small distinction is an important part of accurate reporting.

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Turn the interviews into a careful comparison paragraph

Here is an original model based on the departure variation: “Both characters described folding cards in the art room. Their departure times differed: Tessa said 2.20 and Noor said 2.15. We asked whether Noor meant the tray-packing event. The shared plan places that event at 2.15 and the joint departure at 2.20.”

Notice what the paragraph does not say. It does not call anyone a liar. It does not claim to know who moved the sign. It records agreement, identifies a specific difference, reports the clarification and uses the supplied plan to check the event.

Students can write a shorter version if appropriate: “They agreed about the place, but not the departure time. Noor used the tray-packing time for leaving.” The second sentence should be used only if the clarification actually established that explanation. Otherwise write that the reason for the difference remains unclear.

This is a useful writing challenge because each sentence has a distinct responsibility. A longer paragraph is not necessarily better. The reader should be able to tell which information came from an answer, which came from the plan and which interpretation remains tentative.

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A complete small-group round

Use four roles: two character players, an interviewer and a recorder. An adult can combine interviewer and recorder for a smaller group. The two players study the shared plan, while the interviewer prepares the same four core questions for both.

Interview the players separately within a comfortable, supervised setting. Nobody needs to leave a safe learning space or be isolated to make the game work. The non-answering player can wait at another table with a quiet task, or the group can use written character answers instead of separate performances.

Compare the records using three categories: compatible, conflicting about the same detail, and insufficient information. Ask for one reason in each case. Then reveal the plan and check the disputed event. This closes the round instead of leaving an invented suspicion hanging over a player.

Finish with a language repair chosen by the group. Perhaps they need a clearer departure question, a better way to ask about an ongoing action, or a more accurate reporting sentence. Rotate roles for a genuinely new scenario. Repeating the same hidden timetable mostly practises remembering its answers.

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Design a second scenario with different language demands

For a second round, use a fictional library display team rather than another version of the moved sign. Two characters unpack books, arrange them and photograph the display. Give the plan a sequence but omit exact clock times. Now questions about before, after and during matter more than questions asking for numbers.

For example, the plan might say that the photograph was taken after the books were arranged but before the labels were added. “Were the labels in the photograph?” has an answer the team can infer from that supplied sequence. “What colour were the labels?” still has no answer unless a colour is specified.

This variation asks the students to change their questions to match the information available. They should not mechanically reuse a list of exact-time questions when the new plan gives only order. The content changes the sensible English task.

Keep the new scenario short enough that everyone can understand it before the performance begins. A language game should not become a test of navigating a needlessly complicated invented world. The richest discussion often comes from a small, well-defined difference that the group can examine carefully.

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Parent advice: make the fiction safe and the feedback specific

Choose neutral, playful events. A misplaced paper sign or an unfinished display is enough. Avoid building the game around a child’s actual mistake, family disagreement or frightening experience. The promise that this is fiction should be genuine, not a way to introduce a real accusation indirectly.

Offer roles that suit different comfort levels. A child may enjoy reading the shared plan, recording answers or checking the sequence before wanting to speak as a character. Participation need not begin with public improvisation. Explain what each role contributes to the shared language task.

Praise a concrete move: “You asked about the same departure in both interviews,” or “You noticed that pale green can still be green.” This points to a repeatable skill. Praise for being a brilliant detective is less useful if the child cannot tell which question or comparison worked.

When an answer is confused, return to the plan calmly. Ask the child to connect one event with one time and try the sentence again. There is no benefit in making them defend an accidental inconsistency. The purpose is clearer English and more careful comparison, not winning an argument with an adult.

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Student advice: be precise without pretending certainty

Listen to the whole question before answering. If it asks when you left together, do not give the time you began working. If you are unsure which event the interviewer means, ask. Clarifying the target is more useful than supplying a quick answer to a different question.

Use the character plan honestly within the game rules. If it gives no number of cards, say so. If the activity allows new invention, agree on that in advance. You are practising communication, not proving that you can create missing facts under pressure.

As an interviewer, keep your notes separate from your conclusion. Write what the player said first. Afterwards, decide whether it agrees with the other answer. If your note might be inaccurate, check it. A confident summary of the wrong answer is still wrong.

As an observer, you can contribute a useful sentence: “These answers are different, but they do not necessarily conflict.” Explain why. Careful restraint is part of good reasoning. You do not need to announce the most dramatic conclusion to make a valuable contribution to the group.

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Where this English practice can lead

The activity gives a small, concrete reason to use past-tense questions, time expressions and accurate reporting. Those resources also appear in school discussions of stories, accounts of practical work and reflections on group projects. The connection is about the language job, not a promise that one game produces broad mastery.

To practise transfer, change the task after the game. Ask a student to write a factual account of a familiar classroom process using before, during and after. Or compare two fictional reports of an experiment, carefully separating what each report states from what the reader assumes.

For further study and careers, the useful habit is asking what a statement actually establishes. Many kinds of collaborative work involve checking versions, dates and sequences. The game can introduce that habit, but real settings have their own standards, responsibilities and specialist knowledge. A classroom exercise does not replace them.

English can support this work without being the only language in which careful reasoning happens. Students may discuss a difficult distinction in another language before trying to express it in English. The aim is more usable communication, not a hierarchy of languages or a claim about a learner’s worth.

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Compare exact and approximate time wording fairly

“We left at 2.20” and “We left at about 2.20” do not make identical claims about precision. The second allows some approximation without specifying its exact size. Do not silently treat “about” as a fixed number of minutes unless the game instructions have defined that convention.

For the first round, our plan uses exact written times so that the language comparison stays manageable. If a player adds “about,” the interviewer can ask whether the player means the time on the character sheet or is deliberately giving an estimate. Record the answer rather than deciding in advance that approximation must be deception.

In a later variation, give a plan that genuinely uses approximate periods. The question team then needs to work with that information. Asking for an exact minute will not create an exact minute in the source. A good answer may identify the available period and state that the plan is no more precise.

This is another reason not to reward dramatic conclusions. A difference between two exact claims needs one kind of checking. A difference between an exact claim and an unspecified approximation needs another. Students are learning to preserve the force of time expressions, not merely to extract any number that appears in an answer.

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Distinguish an intention from an event that occurred

Suppose a new character card says, “They planned to leave at 2.20, but the finished cards were not ready until 2.25.” The planned time is not automatically the actual departure time. The card still needs to say when they left if that is the question the team wants to answer.

The original art-room plan is simpler: it explicitly states that they leave together at 2.20. Keep the distinction clear when designing a new version. Do not put a planned action in one interview and an accomplished action in the other, then call the answers contradictory without checking what each statement claims.

Useful follow-ups include, “Is that when you intended to leave or when you actually left?” and “Does your sheet give the departure, or only the plan?” These questions are slightly more demanding because they ask the speaker to classify the information, not just repeat a time.

The same language distinction appears when students discuss a group project. “We intended to finish the poster” and “We finished the poster” report different things. A learner can practise expressing the difference through fiction before applying it to an ordinary factual account. The point is accurate reporting, not finding a clever way to make an incomplete action sound completed.

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Review whether the question itself created the mismatch

After a round, let the question team inspect one of its own questions. “When did you finish?” sounds clear until the characters have finished folding, finished packing and finished the whole session at different times. The missing object of “finish” can make two reasonable answers look inconsistent.

Rewrite the question as, “When did you finish putting the cards into the tray?” If the supplied plan gives only that the packing happened at 2.15, do not pretend it also provides a separate measured completion time. Either accept the plan’s event wording or revise the scenario to supply the distinction you want to test.

This gives students a worthwhile form of self-correction. The interviewer is not merely the person who detects everyone else’s errors. Their wording helps create the conditions under which another person can answer accurately. A fair debrief includes that responsibility.

Finish the review with one improved question and explain why it is better. “It names packing rather than leaving” is a strong reason. “It sounds more formal” is not enough if the target event is still unclear. English precision comes from making the needed distinction available, not simply from adding longer words to a vague sentence.

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Frequently asked questions

Is this a game about teaching children to lie?

No. This adaptation uses an explicit fictional plan to practise questions, answers and comparison. Players may say when information is absent. The group checks statements against a supplied imaginary record and does not make judgments about real people’s honesty or behaviour.

Must the questions be spontaneous?

Not at first. Prepared core questions help keep the two interviews comparable. Spontaneous follow-ups are useful when they address a real uncertainty, but they should not change the event being compared or create pressure simply for entertainment.

Are different answers always inconsistent?

No. A broad answer and a more specific answer can be compatible. Two answers may also refer to different events because the questions differed. Identify the exact claim before deciding whether the accounts conflict.

Do matching answers prove the account is true?

No. In this exercise, matching answers can still disagree with the shared plan. Agreement between two statements and agreement with a supplied record are separate checks. Do not extend the classroom game into a method for making real accusations.

What if a learner dislikes performing?

Offer a recorder, observer or written-response role. Keep the fiction clear and the conditions comfortable. The language goal can be practised through a short written exchange before any spoken role-play, with participation adjusted to the actual learner and setting.

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Useful next reading

The broader Why English Matters guide explains why making meaning available to others is valuable. The English Learning Hub helps connect a short activity with a wider learning programme rather than making one game carry every goal.

For another speaking task, try keeping a Just-a-Minute practice on one clear subject. That exercise develops a connected individual explanation; this one develops questions and comparisons between accounts. Different speaking tasks make different aspects of English visible.

For the language system behind question wording, time and reference, continue with How English Works at SETC. Then begin with one fictional timetable and four fair questions. A careful comparison does not need a dramatic conclusion. It needs words that keep the same event in view.

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