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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Worksheet for low advanced students including a brief explanation of the form and use of the Past Perfect tense followed by an exercise in which students have to fill in the blank spaces with ...
Elementary level tasks meant for children.
Grammar: present simple;
Vocabulary: daily routines, days of the week and presents.
Tasks: fill in the table after reading the text about Jill; Fill i ...
A worksheet to practice the Past Continuous in a quick and simple way, providing five different tasks, with different levels of complexity but all very simple such as fill in the blanks with the ...
This is a worksheet created by Year 6 students to practise making sentences in the simple past or present perfect. Students find a signal word behind each sentence that helps them to decide on whi ...
This worksheet helps learners to recognize the difference in use between the present simple tense and the present continuous tense. Adverbs of frequency are used here to make the &l ...
A nice ppt on verb to be, its uses, examples as well as explanations of the difference between open and closed questions with Peanuts characters as the guides of this funny tour. It also includes ...
The worksheet contains a number of short reading passages (present simple and present continuous are used). Pupils are to answer the questions using the appropriate tense. Good for those who only ...
This material can easily be combined with any coursebook. The worksheet will help your students to be more confident when using these two tenses, to recognize and apply them easily. It's good for ...
A relatively simple task to practice this tense. The worksheet contains three exercises - using verbs (both regular and irregular) in the correct form, completing the story with verbs (given in b ...
This is a classroom activity for practising questions in the simple present and using adverbs of indefinite time (always, sometimes, never). Pupils walk around the classroom and find a partne ...
A worksheet to practice the differences between these two Present tenses, in a quick and simple way, providing four different tasks, with different levels of complexity but all very simple such ...
This is a quick time-filler to review the Simple Past tense, Regular and Irregular Verbs. Every square provides a picture clue and a verb. Every time a correct answer is given it can be used as a ...
A set of 27 cards on Irregular Verbs. Depending on your students' level they can be used in several ways such as memory games, conversation cards, oral test, group work, etc… What to do w ...
This is a pairwork activity in which students have to ask and answer questions about Charlie Chaplin and Agatha Cristie. Each student has to ask questions about a famous person in order to find t ...
This is a PowerPoint that I created to check the students' knowledge on the present simple tense and, at the same time, revise the time and vocabulary related to daily routines. First students cl ...
This simple word search focuses on the simple present forms of the verbs - third person singular '-s' in particular. Have fun teaching! List of words used in this word search: HAS, TAKES, PLAYS, ...
You can use this worksheet during your grammar lessons when learning Future Simple or just to revise this tense. This worksheet will help your students learn Future Simple tense. Children should a ...
A worksheet designed to provide Past Simple (regular verbs) practice, with four different and easy tasks including negative, affirmative and interrogative forms. Like all my previous worksheet ...
This is a grammar worksheet aimed at practising the use of Past Simple and Past Perfect Continuous. It includes two exercises. First, students have to make up a sentence using the given expression ...
This is a Mini Grammar Book dealing with the Present Simple Tense, it was designed for elementary students in order to teach them the basic grammar topics in a simple and appealing way.
The students practice telling the time in different cities. They also practice Present Continuous - ask them to guess the names of the cities and write them in the blocks, then they guess the ...
Here's a simple wordsearch puzzle to review some irregular past verbs. Hope you find it useful. List of words used in this word search: CAUGHT, BE, BECAME, BROKE, BROUGHT, BEGAN, WAS, BRING, BECO ...
This is a worksheet dealing with the Verb To Be in the present, providing a brief explanation and four different tasks including negative, affirmative and negative forms, with different levels of ...
23 22,386ElemPre-Int
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