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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A good song to practice Present Continuous. The worksheet contains different activities to do with the lyrics of the song " Lemon Tree" by Fools Garden. Students have to complete them with the cor ...
This is a multiple choice activity with audio to practice affirmative, negative and interrogative forms of the present simple tense. Students are asked to choose the correct alternative to fill in ...
This is a boardgame to improve sports related vocabulary and the present simple tense, affirmative, negative and interrogative forms. Students use the die and move forward, when they land on a sq ...
The Beatles! Such a wonderful band! It is an awesome song, your students will love it! It is great to work with grown ups and young adults. You can teach present perfect simple and progressiv ...
This worksheet provides 4 different exercises to review the verb to be. Students are asked to complete the sentences with am, is or are, fill in the blanks with the correct full form of the verb ...
This is an excellent way to review will, going to and present continuous to express future time. There are two activities, with audio, in which students are asked choose which tenses or verb form ...
This worksheet contains two variants of the test on present simple and continuous tenses. You can use it to measure your students' skills in using those two tenses in different types of sentenses: ...
With this board game students will practice the most common tenses while playing! They are asked to make affirmative, negative or interrogative sentences with the correct form of the verb (presen ...
Worksheet to practise the most common tenses: present simple, present continuous, past simple, past continuous, future, present perfect and past perfect. There are 24 different sentences in whic ...
A simple worksheet to practice the present perfect continuous tense. There are 24 illustrated sentences in which students fill in the blanks with the present perfect continuous of the verbs in br ...
A worksheet to review the present simple tense, daily routines and frequency adverbs. It includes a brief explanation followed by three exercises in which students match the words with the pictur ...
Worksheet to provide Present Continuous practice. There are two exercises in which students fill in the blanks with the right form of the Present Continuous and build up sentences with the correc ...
This is the second rendering of a series consisting of mixed-tense worksheets meant to integrate many of the grammar topics intermediate students are expected to handle properly. It is designed fo ...
This is a worksheet to learn and to practice past simple tense (irregular verbs). It includes a complete grammar guide and four tasks in which students write the verbs in the past simple, fill in ...
Dictogloss is a classroom dictation activity where students are required to reconstruct a short text by listening and noting down key words, which are then used as a base for reconstruction. It ...
This Power point lesson contains pictures of jobs and words of personal pronouns. Students, when looking at the pictures, will say the name of the jobs. Then, they make sentences with the suggesti ...
Worksheet on past simple of verb to be. Students read the text and complete it with was or were, they are then exposed to the negative and interrogative forms through the reading tasks in ...
The worksheet practices the contrast between Present Simple and Present Continuous. While completing the task students make sentences to describe the situations given in the cards, exchange inform ...
Students can learn about different kinds of musical instruments, can work in pairs miming playing a musical instrument, asking each other using present simple. they will need to look at the chart ...
Some exercises to practise the future simple in which students complete the predictions for the future, complete the sentences with the suitable tense and form and use the words to write questio ...
The following worksheet presents three different exercises: 1) write other (2nd and 3rd) forms of the given irregular verbs; 2) insert the correct form of the irregular verbs in brackets; 3) choo ...
Present Simple vs Present Continous exercises which provide practice for students after they have been introduced to the both tenses. There are three exercises in which students complete the sent ...
Board game with sentences on each square that the students have to re-say in the third conditional form. Good for revision or to reinforce the form after introduction to the grammar. Better with s ...
This worksheet can be used to practice the continuous tenses. I used it for past continuous specifically. I handed each student a card and then called on two students at once to perform their acti ...
This is a multiple choice game with audio to practice Present Simple Tense. Students are asked to click on the correct option to complete the sentence. Recommended for elementary students but it ...
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