Our team is madly working away on False Alarm, our second Detective series, so it’s no wonder this article about Hiring a Wedding Detective caught our eye.  In our first series, Detective Bossley was hired to do some sleuthing before a wedding!

Do your students like a good mystery? Do you enjoy using authentic materials in the classroom? Share this article with your high-intermediate to advanced learners, and get them talking about real-life detectives before you try our upcoming Detective series.

Vocabulary and Collocations

Here are some words and collocations to teach your students from the BBC article.

• in high demand
• extravaganza
• prospective
• scam artist
• matrimonial
• snooping
• grow suspicious
• spat
• solid evidence
• relevant details
• case-by-case basis
• intuition

Discussion Questions

1. How do you feel about arranged weddings?
2. Why are female wedding detectives in high demand in India?
3. Would you go ahead with a planned wedding if you learned that your spouse-to-be had hired a detective to check you out?
4. Why do you think divorce rates in India are on the rise? How does a detective’s job change when hired for a post-matrimonial case as opposed to a pre-matrimonial case?
5. Do you agree with the wedding detective’s assessment that “nothing beats old-fashioned intuition and hard work”? What does she mean by this?

Related in the ESL Library

Detective Series 1: The Case of the Missing Ring
Discussion Starters: Weddings – Paying the Price for the Big Day
Discussion Starters: Surveillance

Coming soon to ESL Library: Detective Series 2 – False Alarm. 

We’re staying pretty tight-lipped about this series, but we can tell you that Detective Bossley will be visiting a high school this time!