To lie or not to lie?
Here's a great story for the classroom that involves fibbing to your students (to fib = to tell a small, unimportant lie).
I went to the station to catch a train.
I arrived about 30 minutes early so I had some time to kill.
I went to the shop and bought a newspaper, to do the crossword, a coffee and a packet of biscuits.
Then I went to the waiting room and sat down at a table.
Now let me describe the scene:
There I am, sitting at the table.
In front of me is the newspaper – open at the crossword page.
On the right is my coffee.
In the middle of the table is my packet of biscuits.
And sitting opposite me – at the same table – is this guy.
He was an ordinary-looking guy.
And I really didn’t expect him to do what he did.
He reached across the table, picked up the packet of biscuits, opened it, took one and popped it in his mouth.
I couldn’t believe it – I didn’t know what to say or do.
So I did absolutely nothing – I ignored it.
After a moment or two, I decided that I should have a biscuit.
So I leaned forward and took one – trying hard not to notice that the packet was already mysteriously open.
And then he did it again! He took another one!
Having said nothing the first time, it was even more difficult to say something the second time.
So again, I pretended not to notice this stranger helping himself to my biscuits.
I remained calm on the outside.
But inside, I was furious.
You could feel the tension in the air.
There was a moment when our eyes met, just for an instant.
We both looked away immediately.
If I remember correctly, the final score was four all in this game of biscuit tennis.
And when the packet was finished, the guy got up and left.
I sat back and breathed a sigh of relief.
After a few minutes, it was my turn to leave.
So I finished my coffee, stood up and picked up the newspaper.
And underneath the newspaper…
…was my unopened packet of biscuits.
I told this story last month from the top of a wall in the garden at Oxford House, Barcelona. This was my plenary talk at the Innovate ELT 2025 conference: 'Stories, the Original Teaching Tools'.
If you watched the video, you will have seen that most of the audience believed that this really happened to me. That is not usually the case!
However, some teachers will feel uneasy or dishonest about lying to their students. So let's look at three options:
1. The hard lie
This is my personal preference. Whenever I tell the story, I lead teachers or students to believe it happened to me. If and when someone questions my honesty, I tell them that they are right to do so and invite everyone to put on their detective hats while I tell the story a second time. During this second telling, students can interrupt me at any time to ask a question. In response to this, I have to do my best to improvise an answer and give an Oscar-winning performance to convince them that it is 100% true. At the end, we have a vote to see who thinks it's true and who thinks it's false.
2. The soft lie
For teachers who feel uneasy about taking the hard lie approach, you can warn your students before you tell the story by saying:
‘I'm going to tell you a story.
It may or may not be true.
Listen carefully and decide if it really did happen to me.’
3. The third person approach
Rather than tell students the story as if it happened to you, tell it in the third person:
‘I'm going to tell you a story about an incident that may or may not have happened to someone.
Listen carefully because afterwards I am going to ask you some questions.
The story is about a man – let’s give him a name.
[Students name the man.]
So one day Eric went to the station to catch a train.
He arrived early and had some time to kill, etc.’
After telling the story in the third person, ask students:
- Where do you think Eric is from? What is his nationality?
- Do you think this is a true story? If not, where did it come from?
Where did the story come from?
The biscuit thief incident is generally credited to English author Douglas Adams, who claims it happened to him in Cambridge in the 1970s and published it in his novel So Long and Thanks for All the Fish – the third title in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.
The story script that I have written is based on the story as Adams told it to David Letterman some time in the 1980s. Interestingly, he claims that it was his Britishness that prevented him from saying something to the stranger. Is this an old-fashioned stereotype? Find out what your students think.
Lesson plan
You can purchace the full Biscuit Thief lesson plan – pay what you like!
- Language level: B1/B2
- Age of learner: Teenagers; adults
- Duration of activity: 60 minutes
- Task: Personalising and retelling a story
- Topics: Urban legends, national stereotypes
- Language focus: Collocations; fronting