While some aspects of a new language are fairly easy to teach, tenses can pose a challenge because they vary so much from one language to another. ESL teachers - particularly new ones - tend to struggle a little with teaching tenses, because it’s not always easy to explain exactly how a given tense works in English; or how it contrasts with other, similar tenses. Throw in the problem of teaching tenses in ways that keep students active, interested, and learning, and you’ve got a recipe for a difficult lesson on your hands.
Not all teachers handle these issues in the same ways. The classic approach would be simply to drill students on grammar until they get it right - but that approach has fallen out of use, in favor of a more integrated teaching method that combines speaking, reading, activities, and other forms of learning. The challenge for the modern ESL teacher, then, is to find ways of presenting each tense that enable the students not only to learn it correctly, but also to be able to produce it and use it dynamically in sentences.
That’s exactly where BusyTeacher.org’s 4,456 verb tense worksheets come in. They’re designed by real ESL teachers to help students see how each tense is used, see examples of different applications for it, and practice using it in all kinds of different exercises. With these worksheets, teaching tenses turns from a dull repetitive process into an engaging series of learning activities, that’ll inspire your students to take what they’ve learned out of the classroom and use it in their actual English conversations.
Our 4,456 tense worksheets cover each tense in the book, from present simple to future perfect continuous - and all things in between. They cover singular and plural verbs, irregular verbs, active and passive verbs, positive and negative verbs, and every other form of a verb you want to teach. In combination with the more rigorous rules laid down in your school’s textbook, these worksheets will give students the practice they need to understand every way in which English verbs can be formed.
In addition to all the verb forms our worksheets cover, they’ll also help you introduce variety into your classroom in another way: by giving you a wide variety of different exercises for practicing verbs in various situations. Some of our worksheets, for example, include simple examples and fill-in-the-blank exercises - while others will help your students organize little drama presentations, play games like “pronoun dice” or a quiz show, or read silly stories and lyrics to popular songs - all targeted at teaching the rules for using one particular verb tense or set of tenses.
These worksheets have been proven to work in classrooms of ESL teachers around the world - and in fact, that’s exactly who contributed them to this site. They’re all free to download and use without any registration, and you’re even free to submit your own worksheets if you’d like - just click the “Submit a worksheet” button at the bottom of this page, and join our international community of English teachers helping English teachers!
All our worksheets can be previewed in thumbnail view before you click and download them - so just take a scroll down this page, see what catches your eye, and try out anything that looks interesting in your classroom. We guarantee you’ll love the results!
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Let's face it, the seemingly endless list of irregular verbs in the past simple never excites students and they basically just have to learn them so...make it fun and play bingo! This is a fun way ...
I made this at 2010, but I changed the year to 2012. You can use this to teach Future Simple as well as personality adjectives. You can also practice reading techniques. In the end your students ...
This is a worksheet, suitable for intermediate students, contrasting the past simple and the past continuous tense. There are 2 activities in which students are asked to circle the correct verb f ...
The worksheet consists of the three people's likes with pictures and three exercises. In exercise 1 the students have to fill in the blanks with the correct affirmative or negative form of like; i ...
I used this worksheet with 10 year-old children and they loved it. You can work the use of can/can't, extensive and intensive listening, and descriptions. The characters, song and the movie are we ...
This is a beginner/elementary worksheet based on a short cartoon Panda Kung Fu - The Secrets of the Furious Five. It dwells on understanding the main characters stories from childhood and then ta ...
With this verb tense chart, together with the accompanying verb tense chart blank, students can review and practice the many verb tenses, both active & passive forms. The teacher might use thi ...
I made it a couple of years ago but you can still use it to demonstrate differences between present perfect and past simple and try a similar exercise about Rihanna. It can also be used simply as ...
Fill in the blanks activity. Great song, people of all ages like it. Good to work Present Perfect Tense and Phrasal Verbs. I gave it to my Teen students and they sang along. Goog vocabulary with m ...
This test is to be used with the very nice video called "Spin" which I found on "busyteacher.org". Thanks to Hass. There are three different exercises, the first to check the students know the dif ...
Past simple presentation.You can use it for grammar lesson.There are some rules about Past simple, some examples of irregular forms in the Simple Past. Notice that you only use the irregular verbs ...
This worksheet helped me with a group of quiet students, I'm teaching English in Mexico and I have a hard time finding activities like this one so that's why I am sharing this with all of you, I h ...
This worksheet covers the topic of stages of human life in the perspective of past experience. It mainly focuses on vocabulary and grammar practice. The tasks start from the easiest one to the mos ...
This is a two page worksheet for teaching the present simple tense and frequency adverbs. Students are asked to complete the text with the correct form of the verbs given and complete sentences w ...
This is a 2-page worksheet contrasting the present simple and the present progressive tense. There is a complete grammar guide followed by a activity in which students are asked to fill in the ga ...
The Proposal is a great movie starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, then your students will have fun while they are trying to get some specific information from the film. This worksheet will ...
Connect 4 Game. The students chose a verb, then have to say a correct sentence using that verb. You can use what ever tense you have taught in that lesson or use it for revision. For higher levels ...
I tried this worksheet for 9th classes to make them speak and write, and they really enjoyed it. Before the worksheet, I presented a ppt about the words they would see in worksheet. In this worksh ...
My worksheet shows the routine of a family. I provide students with a chart with verbs and they have to complete the sentences with one of the verbs. The exercise is easy but it shows two difficu ...
This is a worksheet for teaching the past simple tense. Suitable for elementary students who are asked to complete the text with the past simple of the verbs in brackets,answer the questions abou ...
Work with your student how to predict the future. The Teacher must pretend to be Ma'am Wiseone. He or she will give hypothetical answers as the students ask the questions. That becomes fun, when t ...
The activity combines different activities. I start with having the students watch a part of the film (00.20-00.45) and ask them to tell me what they have learnt about Max. Then I distribute the w ...
I used this song with pre-intermediate and intermediate students to revise grammar: 1, 2 conditional, time clauses and the tenses - mainly the present ones. The students first put the verbs in bra ...
A quick reminder to help students remeber the use of the past simple. Timelines and examples will help students remember when do we have to use the past simple. Necessary before introducing the pa ...
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