A selection of English ESL alibi printables

This worksheet is for the game "Alibi". If you are unfamiliar with the game, it is worth a shot. It stimulates a lot of conversation and creativity. The students make or break this one, so make sure your students are good enough. 

Alibi

Alibi is a game for intermediate and above. It can be used for teaching past tense. Students are made to fabricate a story so as to make the police officers believe that they are not at that place when the actual crime took place. 

alibi

This activity worksheet, vocabulary worksheet and Teacher's Notes worksheet are for the detective game Alibi, which I use for Lower Intermediate level when I'm teaching them Past Simple and Past Continuous. 

Alibi Activity

My own take on the well-known Alibi Game. Includes a vocabulary sheet for entire class, and one sheet for the police, plus alibi sheets for the suspects. Time 40 mins



Alibi Game

In this ESL role play we’re gonna pretend to go to a Green Card Interview. We’ll need three characters: A wife, a husband and an immigrations officer. Great for practising asking and answering past simple and continuous questions.



If you've seen the movie Green Card with Gérard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell, you know that immigrants sometimes marry US citizens to get a green card to be able to stay and work in the States, and they have to pass an interview where they prove their marriage is real. 



Pair up students (husband-wife) and have them meet an immigrations officer separately. Before the interview they have 10 minutes to prepare their story together. They'll be asked 10 questions. In the interview both students have to tell the exact same story, because if the officer finds 3 differences in their stories, the wife will be deported back to her native country.

Green Card Alibi Game

This is a whodunnit activity where students must interview 3 suspects to find out who committed a crime. 

I took the idea from another iSLCollective worksheet and changed the story and added suspects to make it work for my students.

Alibi Jewellery Theft Activity

A crime has taken place. The class divides into suspects and police and role play the interviews where the police try to break the suspects' alibis. 

 The worksheet contains descriptions of three crimes. Cut the page into 3 and choose one. Divide the class into groups of two suspects and two teams of police officers. The suspects, who were together at the time of the crime, must agree on their alibi. Meanwhile, the police write list of initial questions. After 5 minutes each team of police has 5 minutest interview each suspect individually. After 5 more minutes swap over and he police ask the other suspect question and try to uncover inconsistencies that break their alibi. At the end the police report back on their findings. Were the suspects innocent or guilty? You can repeat this with another crime and other suspects or get AI to come up with more "crimes" and keep going! It can be fun to suggest that the police play the "good cop/bad cop" routine..

CRIME ALIBI ROLE PLAY

Alibi is a game for intermediate and above. It can be used for teaching past tense. Students are made to fabricate a story so as to make the police officers believe that they are not at that place when the actual crime took place. 

I have my students play Alibi to review the past tense after learning it, the game is ideal for intermediate and above students, so I have to make it easier to play it with my pre-intermediate level students. That’s why I use this template to help my students create questions when we play Alibi in class. 

Here is a worksheet that explains one possible dynamic for the game: https://en.islcollective.com/resources/printables/worksheets_doc_docx/alibi/intermediate-b1/84898 Since, my students are not so advanced, I do it the other way around, I have the livelier students make up their story outside the classroom, and I prepare a list of possible questions with the rest of the class. After 15 minutes of preparation, I divide the class in groups and have them interview the students that made up the stories. so they can ask them and write their answers. Then they compare their answers and decide whether they are guilty or not.

You can find a nice worksheets to hand out to the students so that they can work on their stories, like this one: https://en.islcollective.com/resources/printables/worksheets_doc_docx/alibi/past-simple-/39488   

I created this worksheet because, I’ve noticed that many of my students struggled comming up with questions.

Question-builder supplement to play Alibi

An exciting detective game for students to practice questions and some vocabulary related to crimes. 



I planned it so that two students (or more) went out the classroom and create an alibi for the night of the robbery. They know in advance the questions they are going to be asked which are in the worksheet (you can tell them there is a mole or infiltrator in the police station). 



In the meantime, the rest of the classroom are police agents, and they need to prepare the questions for the interrogation. They are going to question each suspect independently so the suspects can't be together while the interrogation is on. All the answers need to coincide, otherwise it will be discovered that they are lying. 



After the interrogation the police agents compare the answers of the suspects. If they coincide they are free, but if there is something different, they will go to "prison".



You can even make a kind of trial in the clasroom, so students can decide the best sentence for the robbers. 

Robbery at Watson Manor

ESL exercises about future tenses. Three tasks about will or going to, future simple or future continuous and future perfekt. Review how to make future tenses, improve students' grammar.

Future tenses in English

Originally I created these cards for practising past continuous but it is suitable for other tenses and activities, too. Past continuous: devide the class into groups and give each group a set of cards. Students take turns to pick 2 cards at a time and make sentences with the two verbs in the past continuous (and past simple if the sentence expresses interruption). You can extend this activity with interrogative or negative sentences or you can give them time expressions, or you can play 'alibi', etc. 

Cards with verbs for various purposes

Hi everyone! This is an easy cluedo game I use for my project about detective stories. I split the class into two groups: on the one hand, the suspects and, on the other hand, the detectives. The students have to find out who killed Dobby. The two culprits can give the alibi and the place they want but the others have to stick to what´s written on the card. In the end, the investigators put everything in common and this way, they know who lied to them. Hope it´s useful!:)

Harry Potter Cluedo

Culture, intercultural communication, cross-cultural communication

Adjectives to describe feelings, emotions

Adjectives to describe personality and character

Adjectives: Gradable / Non-gradable adjectives

Articles: Definite or indefinite article (a, an or the)

BE + infinitive structures (e.g. he was to become famous)

Clauses of contrast (e.g.  although, while)

Clauses of purpose (e.g. in order to, so that, so as to)

Clauses of reason (e.g. because, because of, due to, as, since)

Cleft sentences (e.g. It's Joey we're looking for)

Comparison: Comparative adjectives and structures

Comparison: Superlative adjectives and structures

Conditional 2 (second conditional) - would

Conditionals: Conditional phrases (e.g. unless, provided that, as long as)

Conjunctions (aka connectives, e.g. and, but, or, so, then)

Contractions (shortened forms, e.g. don't, aren't, etc.)

Determiners (words that can come before nouns)

Formal and informal English (politeness or colloquial language)

Future perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Future perfect simple and continuous (progressive) tense

Future phrases (e.g. be about to, bound to, likely to, due to, set to + INF)

Homonyms (two words with the same pronunciation - homophones and homographs)

It as preparatory subject (e.g. it's raining, it's nice of you to)

Linking verbs (aka copulas, e.g. I am a student)

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how to accuse somebody of something in English

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how to make, accept and refuse offers in English

how to order or make a booking in English

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Nouns: Collective nouns (team, class, family, committee)

Nouns: Proper nouns (names of people, cities, companies)

Oxymorons (phrases with words of contradictory meaning, e.g. living dead)

Participles: Past participle (e.g. HAVING DONE)

Participles: Present participle (e.g. DOING)

Parts of Speech (aka word classes, e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

Past perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Phonetics (pronunciation, IPA, phonetic symbols)

Plural nouns: regular plurals with S ending

Prefixes (e.g. A, UN, IM, DIS, MIS, EN, etc. )

Prepositions vs adverbs (e.g. before me, saw him before.)

Prepositions: Double prepositions (e.g. out of)

Prepositions: Participle prepositions (e.g. pending, concerning)

Prepositions: Phrase prepositions (e.g. by means of)

Present perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Present perfect simple or present continuous tense

Present simple tense: S for third person singular verbs

Present simple vs continuous (progressive) tense

Pronouns: EACH OTHER, ONE ANOTHER (reciprocal pronouns)

Pronouns: Possessive pronouns (e.g. my, mine)

Pronouns: Reflexive pronouns (e.g. myself, yourself))

Pronouns: SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, EVERYBODY, NO ONE, NOTHING, etc.

Pronouns: THIS, THAT, THESE, THOSE (demonstratives)

Pronouns: YOU and THEY to talk about people in general

Quantifiers (e.g. some, many, much, any, few, little)

Questions: WH questions (open-ended questions)

Reported speech: reported questions (indirect questions)

There is / there are / there was / there were / there will be, etc.

Verbs: Transitive or intransitive verbs (words that can or cannot stand with objects)

Working with Paragraphs: ordering, titling

Role play, miming, drama activity or improv game

Pictionary (picture dictionary) or picture matching

Writing an opinion essay (persuasive essay)

Learners who are Pre-A1 have just begun learning English and will first learn how to:<ul><li>Say the letters in the alphabet and numbers</li><li>Say hello, talk about names and age</li><li>Name the colors and dates, express likes and dislikes</li></ul>

Absolute beginners who have begun to learn the letters and numbers

Learners taking the A1 Elementary exam should be able to:<ul><li>Introduce themselves and ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, things he/she has, people he/she knows.</li><li>Communicate using very basic phrases as long as the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: common adjectives & adverbs of frequency, going to, how much/how many, imperatives, I'd like, 's – possessive, common prepositions of place and time, present simple & continuous, there is/are</li></ul>

A very basic tourist level, which is enough for buying food and a bus ticket

Learners taking the A2 Pre-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand sentences and frequently used expressions (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).</li><li>Complete tasks that are routine and exchange information about familiar matters.</li><li>Describe matters of immediate need in simple terms.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: countable/uncountable nouns, adverbs of frequency, future will/going to, much/many, present perfect, past simple, past continuous, common phrasal verbs, common modals: can/should</li></ul>

A tourist who can do basic conversations about the past, present and future

Learners taking the B1 Intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand points regarding family, work, school or leisure-related topics.</li><li>Deal with most travel situations in areas where the language is spoken.</li><li>Create simple texts on topics of personal interest.</li><li>Describe experiences, events, dreams, and ambitions, as well as opinions or plans in brief.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: question tags, intensifiers: too/enough, future tenses, past tenses, modals, conditionals, wh-questions in the past</li></ul>

Learners who can deal with both familiar and routine situations, in friendly and work contexts

Learners taking the B2 Upper-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialization.</li><li>Interact with fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without difficulty for either party.</li><li>Produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain an opinion on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: perfect tenses, mixed conditionals, modals in the present, phrasal verbs, reported speech, wish, relative clauses</li></ul>

The level where you can be a tour guide for your foreign friends and talk about a lot of topics, even abstract ones, with ease and fluency

Learners taking the C1 Advanced exam should be able to: Express ideas fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts. Produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, using linking phrases (=words that connect ideas between sentences). Main grammar points to know: inversion, mixed conditionals, modals in the past, all passive forms, phrasal verbs (all patterns), wish/if only for regrets

Learners who can smoothly communicate in every walk of life, read long texts and write well

Learners taking the C2 Proficient exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand almost everything read or heard with ease.</li><li>Summarize information from a variety of sources into a coherent presentation.</li><li>Express themselves using precise meaning in complex scenarios.</li><li>Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations</li></ul>

Get here and you are ready to study in English at university

16 Alibi English ESL worksheets pdf & doc