Little lies at home Lesson 336 of the everyday course of Mova's primary school: 24 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Little lies at home usually start small: Owen in Leeds took two chocolate biscuits from the tin before tea and said he hadn't. 1 Mum saw the crumbs on his jumper, and he still said no. 2 He lost his pudding, and Mum said it was more for the lie than for the biscuits. 3 At bedtime he owned up and said sorry for lying to her face. 4 A lie turns a small thing into a big one. 5 Two biscuits are nothing much; a lie told to someone's face makes them wonder what else is not true. 6 Sometimes nobody catches you, and that can be worse. 7 Owen's ball knocked the vase over, and he said his little sister did it. 8 She was sent to her room crying. 9 Nobody found out, but he could not look Mum in the eye at dinner and could not sleep. 10 In the end he woke Mum and told her, and said sorry to his sister. 11 On Saturday he went to confession at church: «Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.» The priest listened, gave him absolution (forgiveness in God's name) and a small penance (a short prayer or task to show he is sorry), and he walked out feeling light, the weight gone. 12 But the priest also said: the sorry to your sister is still yours to say, and you said it — good. 13 Lies are easy to check (a dry toothbrush, a teacher asking about chapter five, a boy looking it up), and once you are caught in a small lie, people stop trusting your big truths too. 14 Lying about a small thing usually gets a bigger consequence than the small thing itself. 15 Small lies are easy to check, and each one caught makes it harder for people to believe you. 16 An excuse that is not true, like «the dog ate my homework», is a lie in a costume. 17 Pretending to be sick does not make a fear go away; telling a grown-up what you are afraid of can. 18 Pretending not to hear when you are called is still not doing what you were asked. 19 Letting someone else take the blame for your wrong hurts them and leaves a heavy secret in you. 20 A guilty conscience, like not sleeping or not looking someone in the eye, is a sign that something needs putting right. 21 Owning up yourself, before you are caught, usually makes the trouble smaller and the trust come back faster. 22 Confession at church can lift the weight of guilt, but it does not replace saying sorry to the person you wronged. 23 You do not need to make up stories to be interesting; your real life is enough. ← previous Fake websites, fake news and bots, skipping a lesson, keeping surprises and being trustednext → Excuses and the lies that grow↑ back to Everyday This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/336-little-lies-at-home/