Fact or Fiction — how to run a trivia mingle that keeps a whole class talking
The deck holds ninety-nine statements and every one of them is settled: sixty-one are true, thirty-eight are not. An octopus really does have three hearts. A goldfish really does not have a three-second memory. A student reads a card to a classmate, the classmate commits to fact or fiction, and a tap reveals the answer along with one line explaining why. Then both of them go and find somebody else.
The point goes to the guesser, not the reader
This is the one rule worth protecting, and it is built into the app: you score when you answer someone else's card correctly, never when you stump them. Reverse it and the room changes character within minutes — students start hunting for the most obscure card, mumbling it quickly, and enjoying their partner's failure. As written, the incentive points the other way. Reading your statement clearly is in your own interest, because a partner who did not understand you cannot give you a proper guess, and listening carefully is the only way to earn anything.
Nobody in the room is talking about English
The statements are about clouds, bananas, DNA and freezing water. That sounds incidental and it is the whole point. A learner who freezes when asked to "practise the present simple" will argue confidently about whether hot water can freeze faster than cold, and produce the same grammar without noticing. The language is the instrument here, not the subject, which is why this activity works with a group that has gone quiet on coursebook speaking tasks.
The explanation line is where the second lesson hides
Every card carries a short justification — two pump blood to the gills, one pumps it to the rest of the body. Most classes skip straight past it. Do not. Ask the guesser to read the explanation aloud, then say in one sentence whether it surprised them. That small addition converts a yes/no exchange into a reason-giving turn, and it recycles the language of cause and effect on every single card rather than once at the end of the lesson.
Making a reluctant class actually stand up
A mingle fails in the first ninety seconds or not at all. Three things prevent that failure. Tell students the target number of exchanges before they start, so there is a finish line. Take the first turn yourself with the quietest student in the room, in front of everyone, so the format is demonstrated rather than described. And stay standing and moving the entire time — a teacher who sits down at the desk gives the class permission to drift back to theirs.
One honest warning about the deck
True statements outnumber false ones roughly three to two. Sharp students notice this pattern faster than you expect and start guessing "fact" by default. When it happens, turn it into the lesson: ask them to justify the guess before the reveal, and only award the point if the reason holds up. Suddenly they have to reason about plausibility in English instead of playing the odds, which is a harder and far more useful task.
Where it fits, and how to stretch it
Ten to twenty minutes, A2 and up, no preparation. As a warm-up it wakes a room up faster than any coursebook lead-in; as a mid-lesson break it resets attention without losing the target language. With A2 groups, accept a bare guess plus a reason. With B1, require the deduction modals the situation naturally produces — that can't be true, it might be true because. With B2 and above, hand the deck over: each student writes two new statements, one true and one invented, and the class has to separate them. Written by learners, checked by classmates, the cards get harder and the language gets better.
Goes well with
Further reading
Why Warm-Ups Matter — the first five minutes of a lesson
Overcoming Speaking Anxiety — why mingles unlock quiet learners