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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This worksheet is a sample of a grammar and vocabulary exam I use for the second course of high school. It includes grammar (present simple, present continuous, past simple, used to) vocabula ...
This is a summary of the main aspects of Simple Present an Simple Progressive Tenses. This worksheet is very useful to have a better understanding between Simple Present and Simple Present Progres ...
Some sentences to practise the past simple and the past continuous of both regular and irregular verbs. Students have to fil in the blanks with the correct affirmative, negative or interrogative f ...
Some sentences to practise the past simple form of both regular and irregular verbs. Students have to fil in the blanks with the correct affirmative, negative or interrogative form of the verbs in ...
A simple worksheet contrasting the present perfect, past simple and past perfect tense. There are two exercises in which students are asked to read the sentences, choose and circle the most suita ...
This is a 2-page worksheet, suitable for elementary students, on present simple and daily routines. There are four different exercises in which students mark sentences as true or false, answer qu ...
You can find a lot of regular and irregular verbs in past and past participle conjugation, this page is very helpful for people need to know about the correct conjugation and aditionaly it has the ...
This song revises the simple past form of some verbs.The verbs are given in the present form and students will put them in the correct form (either past or present) in the blanks in the song lyric ...
This is a two-page useful worksheet with a mix of exercises about Present Simple and the 3rd Person singular, for elementary students, where they can practise and study this tense and the verbs sp ...
This is a Past Simple worksheet with rules of the regular formation of some verbs in the past. It also has a small fill-in-the-gaps activity using some regular and irregular verbs in the Past Simp ...
A worksheet contrasting the present simple and the simple past tense for intermediate students. There are 3 different exercises in which students are asked to circle the correct form of the verb, ...
The ws consists of sentences to contrast the use of the present simple and the present continuous in the affirmative, negative and interrogative form. Students have to fill in the blanks with the ...
There are 26 sentences to revise the present continuous in the affirmative, negative and interrogative form. Students have to fill in the balnks with the correct form of the verb in brackets. Spec ...
There are 30 sentences to revise the present simple in the affirmative, negative and interrogative. Students have to fill in the gaps with the correct form of the verb in brackets paying attention ...
There are four activities:
1- read the descriptions, and write the seasons next to them
2-write the months next to the right season
3-look at the pictures and write true or false
4-write the ...
This is the 2nd ws about jobs, with 25 new jobs to describe. Sudents have to choose a verb from the given list to fill in the sentences, then they will have a sentence to describe what these peopl ...
There are 25 pictures for 25 jobs. Sudents have to choose a verb from the given list to fill in the sentences, then they will have a sentence to describe what these people do in their jobs. They c ...
This worksheet is on Tina Turner's song called 'The best'. Its main purpose is listening, it has comparative & superlative instances and mixed tenses such as present simple, continuous and pre ...
This exercise can be used for oral or written practice. Following the instructions in the body and outside it students can guide themselves to talk about his name, physical appearance, nationalit ...
To practise the simple past in the affirmative form, there are 25 pictures with a sentence under each one and a list of verbs students have to choose from to complete the sentence using the past s ...
There are 30 pictures with people doing different activities. Under the pictures there's a sentence with blanks and a verb in brackets. Students have to fill in the blanks with the verbs in the c ...
This activity is to practice Simple Past. Students work with the lyrics and practice the past form of the verbs given. As an introduction you can also use the video of the song. You can give your ...
An ESL worksheet for Intermediate students, to learn more about the Occupy Wall Street Movement and simple past/present perfect. This worksheet refers to an article taken from the New York Times. ...
Worksheet about Past Simple of regular and irregular verbs. The worksheet starts with a short grammar reminder, a list of irregular verbs and their Past Simple and Past Participle forms. There is ...
Present Simple vs Present Continuous: what should you use in which sentence? The worksheet starts with a short grammar reminder after which the students can try the gap filling exercises. This wo ...
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