In the advanced English
conversation class I teach at my uni here in Korea, we recently finished one of
my favorite lessons: a murder mystery.
I’m a diehard mystery
aficionado, so each year I literally count the weeks until I can use this
lesson. I wrote this two-round murder mystery specifically to complement our
textbook’s lesson on the past progressive; if there’s a more interesting and
appropriate context for this verb tense, I haven’t found it. The mystery is set
on our campus and takes into account realistic distances and locations. Students
I taught several years ago still remind me about this lesson—and the final “whodunit”
reveal.
Round 1: Using the past progressive to establish and
probe alibis
First, I give students
the set-up: “This past Sunday, one of your classmates was murdered. Did you
hear about it?” I try to look serious, but I usually crack a smile pretty
quickly; too often, at least one student looks horrified and asks,
“Really?”—and then I feel a modicum of guilt, and dispel his/her concern with a
wink and a grin.
Then I add the rest:
“Someone in this room killed her! Ten of you were on campus on Sunday
afternoon. They found her body in the Student Union Building at 4:45 p.m. The
last outgoing call from her cell phone was placed at 4:23 p.m., so she was
alive at that time. Your job is to find out who killed her, when, and why.”
I distribute character cards: ten students are suspects, and the remaining students are detectives.
The first round, the suspects find out what they were doing around the time of
the murder, but no one knows who the murderer is—not even the murderer, him/herself.
This round just establishes who was where at what time and begins to give hints
about motivation. The suspects write their names on the board next to their
suspect numbers, and the first round officially begins.
It takes about ten
minutes for the detectives to interview the suspects, preferably using the past
progressive to inquire about their whereabouts. Throughout the game, suspects
can’t lie about where they were, but they can mislead the detectives about
their reasons for being there. As this round winds down, the detectives begin
to compare notes as I slip the second round of clues to the suspects.
Round 2: What’s the motivation?
It has been said there
are three basic motives for murder: money, love, and revenge. In this game, we
have a little of each! The second round reveals that nearly every suspect had a
motive for murder: they fought with the victim recently; they were seen kissing
her boyfriend; they bought a lottery ticket with her; she found out about a
secret indiscretion. A few of the suspects don’t have an obvious motive but are
suspicious merely because their alibi doesn’t seem to hold up to scrutiny.
During this round, the
murderer finds out who he/she is, and… well, there are actually two murderers,
two suspects who worked in tandem to murder the victim. During this round the
two of them generally coordinate a story to explain why they were seen hurrying
away from the scene of the crime, and they either keep their heads down and
mostly remove themselves from the boiling frenzy of accusations, or they gather
incriminating information about the other suspects and spread it with vigor.
It’s always fascinating to see what different pairs choose to do!
The closing: the final reveal
During the last twenty
minutes of class, everyone is given a few minutes to share their suspicions and
conclusions with their group members, and then the accusations begin. We open
the floor to guesses, and together we consider each guess one by one, starting
with what the suspect was doing at the time of the murder and ending with what
his/her motivation could have been. Finally, I ask him or her, “Did you do it?”
He or she replies honestly.
The actual murderers are
rarely accused until all the other suspects have been cleared; they have no
obvious motives. In fact, their clue cards explain what they did and how, but
not why! It’s interesting to see if anyone can piece together their motivation
based on what the other suspects say. The information is all there; it’s just a
matter of putting it together and adding a little creative—and
macabre—thinking.
I love this game for so
many reasons. The students—even the more squeamish ones—enjoy it; it’s set in and around our
university, so it’s easy for participants to get sutured into the fiction; and
it’s delightful to see how creative the students can be in their misdirections.
I also love that it offers the perfect opportunity to use the past progressive
as it was intended: to explain what was happening at a given point in time.
