Murder of a Billionaire (C1/C2)-Advanced ESL/ELA Murder Mystery Game Interactive Classroom Speaking Activity

This interactive mystery game was the first digital resource I made from scratch for my ESL students.

C1/C2 students have fairly good English skills, so most of their classes involve a lot of free discussion on the given topic or reading assignment of the week. However, despite their advanced abilities, I find many of my C1/C2 students are reluctant to speak English in public because they're scared of making a mistake or embarrassing themselves, so it requires a very interesting topic to get them to talk spontaneously.

I like using mystery resources with these students because they find it easier to speak up once they get into the story, but most ESL mystery resources out there are either short reading comprehensions or group role-playing activities where students play one or more characters within the mystery. These are fun, but I wanted my students to question suspects and work through a mystery as though they were detectives, so I made this resource.

The storyline isn't too complex, definitely more Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew melodrama rather than Agatha Christie. (On a side note, I always found it hilarious how Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew books loved to end their chapters on an exclamation-pointed sentence such as "The car was heading straight for Frank!" "Nancy was trapped!")

Anyway, back to the resource.

The synopsis: Billionaire Matthew Cooke was stabbed to death in his own house at eight o’clock on Monday evening. 

The suspects: There were four people in the house, including his son, Tony; his daughter, Mandy; his secretary, Evelyn; and his chauffeur, John.

Each of the suspects has a profile page which includes their alibi for the time of the crime:

Each suspect also has a page where they accuse someone else or air their opinions on the crime:

I usually pick one or two students to read these profile pages out loud and we discuss each suspect after reading their profile pages. I ask students to give their first impressions of these suspects in a couple of sentences. (Notably, one student once concluded that a suspect "sounded like an airhead"; he was very proud of knowing that word!)

Once we've gone through all the suspect profile pages, we can start to question the suspects:

Although the questions that can be asked are limited, I find that students think it's quite fun to be able to interact with the characters in this way. The questions don't have to be asked in order so you can ask Suspect A one question, go to Suspect B, and then come back to Suspect A to ask another question. 

The students have printable Detective's Notebook pages to make notes on so I tend to pause after each question and response to give the students time to write down their notes, consider the implications of each answer, and discuss what they have learned. I also remind the students that all of the suspects could be lying, so they should consider each statement carefully based on what they already know.

During the course of the questioning, some students have been known to blurt out things like "He's lying!" "She did it!" as they figure things out. I ask them to slow down and lay out their thinking for the other students using sentence structures such as:

• A said [this] and B said [that]. These statements are inconsistent, so one of them must be lying.
• A said [this], but we know [this and that], so she must be lying.

(There's also a printable Making Inferences Detective's Notebook file that can help students lay out this kind of thinking as they work their way through the game.)

Once the students think they know who committed the crime, they can accuse a suspect by clicking on them:

However, the suspects don't like being accused and tend to react angrily, so the students will have to provide a logical explanation as to why they committed the crime:

The suspect's responses to an accusation may reveal new information that can take the case in a completely new direction! 

The students can go back and question or accuse other suspects at any time. (I like to remind frustrated students that this sort of back-and-forth investigation work is probably what real detective work is like. They tend to roll their eyes at me when I say that.)

Ultimately, the students will hit on the right solution and solve the mystery, after which they can go back to the beginning of the game if they want to read the suspect profile pages and responses again, and the lesson also includes a short debriefing slideset where the students can talk about how they worked through the mystery.

The whole lesson takes around 60-90 minutes depending on the size of your class and the enthusiasm level of the discussions. This resource is designed for C1/C2 students, but the language level is suited to native speakers as well, so this could be used as a back-to-school icebreaker or for an ELA making inferences class. It's also just a fun game in general (even if I do say so myself).

This lesson contains:

• An 8-page Teacher's Guide (PDF)
• A 47-page gameplay slideset (PowerPoint Slide Show)
• A 6-page discussion slideset (PowerPoint)
• Two Detective’s Notebook files (3 pages for basic version and 2 pages for the making inferences version, both PDF)

Click here to buy this interactive mystery game on TPT.

Click here to see my other interactive mystery games on TPT.

Click here to download a FREE trial version of this product from TPT.