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 is played the same as a regular Battleships game in pairs. Students mark their fleet (I laminate my worksheets for students to use erasable markers) and use either different design or different ...
Verb tenses are tools that English speakers use to express time in their language. You may find that many English tenses do not have direct translations in your language. That is not a problem. By ...
Students will have to ask their partners: do you like...? They will practice the structure: I like.... I don't like, then they will able to make a short report about the results obtained in the su ...
This file includes some information about some famous people. It contains their names, nationalities, ages, occupations and their website addresses. You can use this worksheet to practice greeting ...
Here's a brief explanation of present perfect for elementary students. It contains a brief explanation with ever. There's no exercises put in this ppt, only the explanation. Simple and d ...
I have designed this game for the first session of my class. It includes these topics: action verbs, food, and toys. The grammar focuces on present simple and present continuous. Divide your class ...
Students find it difficult to differentiate between future forms. When you make it clear and teach them to visualise the situation it's easier for them. 1) A dark cloud refers to the be goi ...
This fun video activity is to practise using mixed past tenses, including past simple, past continuous, and past perfect. The video shows Mr. Bean at the hospital. Learners must combine two senten ...
This worksheet is designed for elementary and pre-intermadiate level learners. It can be used for improving listening skills and practising there is/are and prepositions of place. It can help your ...
This fun video activity is to practise using the present simple tense when describing daily routines. The video shows the daily routine of a Stormtrooper. While watching the video, learners must d ...
A power point presentation to practice asking questions in present simple with 'you' and the 3rd person singular. The ppt was initially created for a one-to-one class, but can easily be adapted fo ...
Simple worksheet for writing a few simple sentences about Celine Dion based on given information. Each following sentence is based on the following information given at the top of the page. This e ...
This is a fun video activity to practise using the past simple tense. Watch the video from the link below. The video tells a story using photographs. Students should watch the video and then try t ...
This listening activity has 3 exercises for students to review some modals such as "can" for ability and "will" for future, both positivie and negative stataments, and some common action verbs us ...
This is an activity for motivation for the lesson start. It can be used as a game in class. It has some pictures where a student can describe and write sentences. You can do this with two or more ...
Students use prompts + the subject in the field they land on to make questions/positive/negative sentences. Applicable to all tenses. E.g., revision of past tense. A student rolls a 5 and makes a ...
This boardgame is aimed at elementary or pre-intermediate learners and is designed to provide an opportunity to practise expressing future intentions. Its use is self explanatory. It is a PDF fil ...
This worksheet is suitable for improving your students' writing skills. They are going to write three paragraphs about three types of life style in the past, present and future. They sho ...
This worksheet is appropriate for reviewing simple present, occupations, and daily routine activities. It's appropriate for young learners and elementary students, it will take 20 minutes.&nb ...
This worksheet contains the use and construction of present simple. It contains 10 cases of use and examples, adverbials of time that indicate this tense and a section that tell students how to bu ...
This is a song worksheet by Eurovision song contest winner Lena Meyer. The song can be downloaded at youtube or other websites. It can be used best to practice past simple and entertain students. ...
This is a powerpoint presentation that I made using website resources that will hopefully help you introduce future tenses and your students learn about future tenses and practice exercises online ...
In this activity students will reinforce the previous knowledge of the use of present perfect tense. This activity contains 30 sentences in which students fill the gaps with the verb in past parti ...
This file includes some vocabulary items related to the activities children do at the playground, such as swinging, sliding, skating, etc. The grammar focuses on present continuous. Hope it helps.
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