Lie your way to better English!
Improve your fluency, creativity and critical thinking skills
If you want to improve your speaking skills, try lying as much as you can.
How’s that for great advice?
Many people hate receiving unsolicited advice, but as teachers our job is to regularly offer it. You have to trust us: you may not ask for it, but we think it’s in your best interests to do what we say (even if we don’t do it ourselves).
Which is better?
“What did I do last weekend? Nothing. I slept.”
“What did I do last weekend? Well, I was going to have an early night because I’d had a difficult week at work but my friend rang me up and invited me over, and I couldn’t turn him down, and we ended up drinking an entire bottle of scotch and then going to a nightclub and I don’t remember much after that, but I danced all night and then woke up in a hotel room in Vegas with a new wife – a lovely 82-year-old babushka named Stefania. It was a pretty wild weekend!”
The first one is the truth but doesn’t require much thought and you’re not challenging yourself at all.
The second is, well, a bit debatable but it certainly does stretch you as a language user, forcing you to dig deep and use your imagination as a way of developing your fluency.
And what does ‘better’ actually mean here? From a teacher’s perspective, I want to see students trying to push themselves to use as much new language and speak for as long they can. Get out of your comfort zone and lie, if necessary, to improve your speaking skills. Practice, practice, practice!
Imagine you’re taking an exam, IELTS for example (many will know what this exam is, but for anyone who doesn’t, it’s an exam to study abroad or emigrate or for other reasons). You want to show off your English to the best of your ability, and are asked a fairly simple question:
“How do you usually spend your weekends?”
The truth is that you do nothing but sleep. You’re lazy and unmotivated. You’re so tired after every working week that you can barely find the energy to do anything. So your answer is something like this:
“Um, I don’t do much. Sleep, I guess. Yeah, that’s pretty boring, I know, but I’m so tired.”
The examiner is thinking, “Hmm, dull answer, but even duller, less inspiring English.”
You don’t have to lead an exciting life or have the most vivid imagination in order to demonstrate good language skills. You have a few options here.
1 Tell the truth, but in a self-deprecating way, adding in as many details and reasons as you can: “Umm, I have a dreadfully boring life, I just spend every weekend sleeping, hibernating like a bear. I’m so damn knackered from a long working week that all I can do is catch up on sleep at the weekend. If I can be bothered to get out of bed, which is rare, then I might stumble over to the fridge to grab a beer, but that’s about it. Pretty dull, I know, but hey, that’s life!”
Language-wise, that’s a beautiful answer, rich in vocabulary: dreadfully boring, hibernating, damn knackered, catch up on, can be bothered to get out of, stumble over, grab a beer.
But that’s not an easy answer to give if you lack the language to do so.
2 Pretend to be a politician and avoid the question, trying to change the topic to something more interesting: “Well, uh, the weekend, sure, cool…umm, yeah, so I love my job, I’m an accountant, and it sounds like it’s boring, but it’s not, because I get lots of perks at my office, like good coffee and bagels and it’s…”
This is a terrible thing to do. Don’t do it.
3 Tell the truth, sort of, but embellish or exaggerate if need be: “Most weekends I get together with my friends and we go to the pub and drink loads of beer, then play football in the park at night, even if we’re drunk, and then get home in the wee hours and pass out and then wake up in the afternoon.”
4 Lie 100%. Make something up. This is a good tactic if you’re less confident and don’t have the language skills you need. It doesn’t have to be complex. Simple is fine, if it gives you a chance to use a wide range of language: “Well, I’m really into yoga, so I spend my Saturday mornings doing that, and I love music and I’ve recently taken up guitar lessons, and it’s going well so far. Now and again I work out at the gym, or I go for a run, but otherwise, I just chill out and read some books or chat with a friend.”
It doesn’t matter if you spend all weekend in your pajamas. Whoever you’re talking to will probably never find out and it doesn’t really matter if you’re doing it for the right purposes.
My life as an examiner: two stories
During one exam, a woman had to give me a two-minute monologue on this rather banal question: “Tell me about something you plan to buy in the future.” I could tell from her reaction that she wasn’t thrilled about the question. Her language skills were great, so she had no trouble telling me about the red Ferrari she was planning on buying. Her use of language was so good and that’s mainly what I was focusing on, even if I suspected she was making it all up (you do also have to be coherent and make some sort of sense). I was judging her language skills, not so much the content of her answer.
After the exam, she sheepishly admitted that she’d made the answer up, as if I couldn’t tell (much of the time we know). I told her that it was nothing to worry about, people do it all the time.
She was the only one who ever admitted this. Perhaps she was confident enough in her language skills to tell the truth.
So let me share one more story about not needing good language skills.
Same exam, same situation, a nervous teenager with a Pre-Intermediate/Intermediate level of English. The question: “Tell me about a wedding you’ve attended.”
She had the classic ‘dear in the headlights’ look. I could tell right away she’d never been to a wedding. This is a tough question for anyone, let alone a 15-year-old with little life experience.
After a bit of anxious hesitation, she told me about her own wedding: her own fairy tale wedding to Prince Charming. She told me about a big castle, and frogs and the food and drink and obviously it was total nonsense. But she did an excellent job, to the best of her abilities, even with limited language, to test her limits and come up with something. And I was impressed (but still had to assess her objectively based on her language use).
Sometimes you have no choice but to lie. You can’t just say, “Sorry, I’ve never been to a wedding.” Say something, anything. But not nothing.
Liar, liar, pants on fire
But never mind exams. In class or simply as a way to practise your speaking skills, try lying from time to time, or at least embellishing a bit. If you feel bad about it, afterwards tell the person: “Hey, I was just kidding about not showering at all last year, I actually did shower…once or twice. I’m just following this wonderful advice from my teacher about telling a few fibs to improve my speaking skills.”
It’s always good to have a few stories up your sleeves – there are always opportunities to tell stories, anecdotes or jokes. Have some stories about past experiences ready to share: about a holiday, your first kiss, your first pet, your first day of school, the first time you got caught shoplifting, etc
There’s a game teachers play in the classroom, often when we’re getting to know our students. We share a series of statements about our lives and students have to guess whether they are true, false or 50/50: “I have 10 tattoos, I used to play the guitar in a school band, I lied about my qualifications to get this job.” The trick is to convince your partners that you’re telling the truth by making it sound as plausible as possible. It’s not easy and requires some creativity, but it’s great for your critical thinking skills.
(There’s a popular British television show called ‘Would I Lie to You?’ and if you’re interested in seeing how this works in practice, go to YouTube and watch a few episodes.)
Practise this a bit on your own and with your friends. See if they can tell the difference between a truth and a lie. Or tell a true story but just add a lie or two and see if they can spot the lies.
A brief word about embellishing and exaggerating: the briefest ‘word’ ever (!) and the best thing I’m ever going to tell you (!)
It’s worth stressing here that I am not advocating lying as part of your everyday routine – heavens no! I don’t want to corrupt you or get you into trouble. I’m following up on my previous post about teachers lying to their students or parents lying to their children. I’m not here to preach good values and tell you about being an honest and morally responsible person, although those are certainly great qualities to have.
Let me share the thoughts from one of my loyal readers – this was a comment from my last post:
“A teacher of mine once said that the reason people aren't honest with others and more importantly, dishonest with themselves, is because we are afraid of the consequences of being honest.”
This brings to mind two quotations that are apt here:
“Being honest might not get you a lot of friends, but it will always get you the right ones.”
John Lennon"Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said."
Mark Twain
All of this is good advice, and I particularly like the part about the “consequences of being honest.”
Let’s face it: people lie all the time. To themselves, to their friends, on social media. We’re afraid of being seen as boring or as we really are. The so-called ‘consequences’ of honesty scare us.
We also exaggerate a lot. This is just human. We might have a headache and say, “This is the worst headache of my life!” Or we wait a bit longer than usual for the bus and get to work and say, “I had to wait forever for the bus!” No, it’s not the worst headache of your life. No, you didn’t wait forever for the bus.
These are perfectly normal and relatively harmless.
(There’s a place for the classic ‘dog ate my homework’ category of lies as well as white lies: “That sweater looks great; I love your earrings; This soup is delicious”.)
What about lying during job interviews? Or on your CV or resume?
Don’t call this lying. Call it embellishing. But once again, please do be careful.
I know of people who have blatantly lied about the university they attended. Don’t do this: you will get caught.
People lie all the time during job interviews and on job applications. Is this justifiable?
When I was at university, I had an early morning internship at KISS 108, a radio station on one of Boston’s most famous shows (‘Matty in the Morning’, which ran from 1981-2022). I did nothing terribly important: made some coffee and way too many photocopies, did lots of busy work and internet ‘research’, which in the 90s was a painstakingly slow process.
I was a lowly intern, but I was doing it for the experience. But what did I put on my resume? That I was a mere ‘intern’ and made lousy coffee and faffed about on the internet for a few hours each week? No, of course not. I said that I was a ‘Logistics and Operations Administrative Assistant’ and that I ‘provided key logistical support to ensure the smooth and efficient running of the highest-rated morning radio show in the greater New England area’ (or something like that). I didn’t lie: I embellished. That dude Matty needed his coffee to make sure the show went well!
Lying: justifiable, as long as it’s for the right purposes and under the right circumstances.
Your homework (a bonus challenge revisited)
A couple of posts ago, when talking about my book and the fear of making mistakes, I offered up a challenge. I asked you, dear readers, if you could find the sentence containing 10 or 11 errors. It was meant to be a joke – ha ha, I was afraid of making some mistakes and ha ha, here’s an awful sentence littered with them. Either it was so obvious that you found it immediately, or you didn’t care or you didn’t even read that far to see the sentence. Anyway, in case you missed it, here it was:
Although, I’m prety confidant, but Im also absolutly teriffied that I had made a tons of miskates in me book.
There you go. Try to find the 11 mistakes (or 10, if you’re from certain parts of the UK). Answers in my next instalment, along with some book updates.
Happy New Year.
