Solve a crime.

STAGE 1

The teacher presents the crime scene, but not by simply telling students what happened. 
Instead, the teacher makes this stage interactive and suggestive by offering no more than
the list of key words and phrases below, from which students must attempt to deduce the
series of events.

John Flitz    9 p.m.    country house    dinner    six guests   midnight   shots heard    Flitz’s
body    discover

STAGE 2

Students are informed that the guests who attended that infamous dinner party are being
interrogated by two inspectors.  In pairs, students compose testimonies for the guests by
completing a worksheet provided.  Each student of each pair will complete one version (A or
B) of the worksheet in order to create his or her set of testimonies.

STAGE 3

Once the two versions of the worksheet are filled in, students are told that four of the six
guests had plotted the murder, and that those guests gave testimonies which contradict one
another.  Students who completed version A of the worksheet then compare their
testimonies with students who completed version B of the worksheet.  By paying close
attention to the meaning changes caused by the alternating uses of the Past Perfect and the
Simple Past in their sets of testimonies, students will be able to determine which guests are
telling the truth, and which guests are lying and may well have plotted the murder of Flitz.

STAGE 4

After students have decided, in pairs, who the four suspects must be, one student from
each pair reads out the suspects’ names.  The teacher writes on the board the names read
out for each pair.  Students are then asked to justify their decisions, highlighting the
meanings conveyed by the use of the Past Perfect in some testimonial statements and the
use of the Simple Past in others.

It seems to me that the force of the Past Perfect is illustrated quite vividly in this activity.

OK, so students won’t be thinking that they’ll necessarily be incarcerated for using the
wrong construction, but they may well come to realize that getting a handle on that unruly
old Past Perfect is worth their time.