Vocabulary and Expressions

Excuses

Vocabulary and Expressions

A lame excuse (“My dog ate my homework” is a lame excuse)
A good excuse (People will accept your excuse)
To excuse yourself (from doing something)
Excusable (for instance, if you’re speeding to the hospital, it’s excusable. If you’re speeding to a party, it’s inexcusable.)
Any excuse will do (for instance, if you love playing pool, but you have lots of homework, and someone has a pool party – well, any excuse will do!)
Excuse me! (When you do something rude, inappropriate, or unwanted) /

Your Excuses

What’s the craziest excuse you’ve ever heard?
When you’re late, what’s your typical excuse?
What are some other situations when you need to use excuses?
If you have children, what excuses do they usually use, and for what situations?
Is it wise to use excuses with professionals such as the police? If you’ve excused your driving to a policeman/woman, talk about the situation and why you decided to use an excuse.

Why????

Why do you think people like to use excuses instead of telling the truth?
What does this say about people in general?
Do you think the world, in general, would work better if everyone stopped using excuses?
Is it ever wrong to use an excuse? If yes, when? /

Famous Excuses

Make up short stories in which the following excuses are the “punch lines”, or endings of the stories:
My dog ate my homework (actually, you didn’t do your homework)
I’m too full to eat any more (actually, you don’t like the taste of your host’s food)
I have to go – I’m in a rush (actually, you have nothing to do, but you don’t want to keep talking to this person)
I’m so sorry I can’t meet you right now – I’m too busy (you wouldn’t be too busy if someone else were asking for a meeting, though!)

Excuse Me!

What kinds of responses are appropriate in the following situations? With a partner, act out how you would excuse yourself if:
You spilled red wine on someone’s white shirt at a party
You accidentally banged into someone’s car and damaged its fender
You forgot to pay back the money you owed someone
You made a rude comment about someone to a friend of yours, and then you turned around and found that someone was listening!
You didn’t give the cashier at the check-out enough money. /

Inexcusable

What things would you consider to be inexcusable? See if you can put the following into excusable/inexcusable categories:
-You can’t come in to work because you are sick with a cold
-You promised to pick up your daughter from school, but you got busy and forgot
-You’re late for work because you slept in
-You’re late for work because there was a traffic jam
-You sent an e-mail to another employee; the e-mail had a virus but you didn’t know that
-You forgot your mother’s birthday
-You forgot your driver’s license at home, and now the police have stopped you