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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It's a clear worksheet which emphasizes the situations in which present continuous must be used in addition to easy exercises dealing with the affirmative, negative, and interrogative forms. Besid ...
It's a slide presentation based on the topic "How to teach Present Perfect" here. If you can use data show in your class, I find it useful. It is a step-by-step presentation of the present perfect ...
3 pages and a total of 6 excercises which cover the order of a sentence, the usage of personal pronouns, verb tenses (past/present and future) and students have to form past tense questions. I hop ...
This worksheet could be helpful for a listening activity. It consists of a filling in the gaps activity. First complete with verbs and then complete with nouns. The nouns can be pre-taught -   ...
This worksheet provides good practice of present and past tenses along with adjectives while talking about a celebrity or one's champion. It is intended for pre-intermediate to intermediate learne ...
In this table irregular verbs are divided into several groups (marked by different colours) based on common features of forming past simple and past participle. Learning irregular verbs grouped li ...
Here's another board game I made to get your students into verb tenses. I've used the present simple and present continuous/past simple and past continuous but you can of course use all tenses, it ...
This is a fun and easy worksheet that I made for my students in the 5th year of primary school. With this worksheet they can practice the third person singular of present tense, time and daily ro ...
Hello teachers, I have used many of your worksheets here, so now I want to share one of my own with you. Normally I use this song to have a small intro about Future Continuous, or I use it as a fi ...
Past simple tense and its uses. Learners practise the forms extensively through a variety of graded drills. The exercises tend to instill the "how" to use past simple in the learners' mind plus de ...
Another worksheet for practicing short answers. This time students will have to deal with simple and continuous tenses. I normally use this kind of exercises to reinforce or revise the structure w ...
Using and practising present simple in terms of : 1-use. Learners should grasp when using and be able to descriminate between the different uses of the present simple tense and practising the diff ...
This worksheet is devoted to the topic of Winter. It helps to practise the vocabulary (everything that is connected with winter activities). It includes reading, spelling and speaking. Grammar is ...
Use this simple test to practice Present Continuous with your students. There are some tasks to ask questions to the sentences. Ask four types of questions. Also, there is a task on using som ...
It's a good classroom activity. It can be used both with teachers and students. Level can be simple but it can be appropriate for a beginner. It is a gap-filling activity with the repetition ...
On this file there are 20 questions in the Present Simple and Present Continuous tenses. Students have to write the short answers for each one. This activity can be used as a revision exercise or ...
This worksheet was designed to introduce some new vocabulary about the interior of the room and to practise using THERE IS/THERE ARE pattern. The students are supposed to write the transcription ...
This is a Christmas listening/ gap fill worksheet activity using the song 'Last Christmas' by Taylor Swift. The students have to complete the lyrics using the correct tense of the 22 verbs at the ...
Song by Britney Spears which is very handy during Christmas lesson. It contains several exercises: - joining the lines, - putting verb into Past Simple, - filling in the gaps, - putting the lines ...
The worksheet is aimed at practising the use of Present Continuous and Present Simple (at elementary level). It contains a picture and prompting words for making sentences in Present Continuous an ...
Reading comprehension for beginners aroud family members including grammar activities and a written expression where learners present their families after they have drawn their family trees.The fo ...
It's a worksheet about British history: The British Empire - The figure of Ghandi and the war for independence... There are reading activities: answer the questions about the text, read the answ ...
FORM OF THE SIMPLE PRESENT We use the infinitive of the verb. In the 3rd person Singular (he, she, it - or a name) we put an -s at the end of the infinitive. infinitive - 3rd person Singular (he, ...
This worksheet is good for practicing daily routines and present simple questions, as well as telling the time. It is a pair work activity. Students ask each other about their routine day. If they ...
This is a speaking activity. First, practice the words or phrases ' get up, go to school .... . Student already learned how to telling the time. Students first write the time for the routines a ...
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