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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The sheet is for practicing Past Simple Tense. It has two exercises - one of them is to change the verbs into Past Simple and say whether they are regular or irregular, and the other one is to ch ...
This material provides more than ten questions for oral discussion. The topic is - how often do you do something. Helps you get to know your students better. Hope you like it! )
I've made this worksheet for introducing some new words (outdoor and indoor activities) to my beginner Ss and practice Present Simple using like/dislike while interviewing each other. They ask que ...
Well, this is a worksheet to work on the pronunciation of the past form of regular verbs. It contains a list of verbs in infinitive form to be then passed in their past form and grouped according ...
This is a crossword about jobs. Colorful and easy, to teach vocabulary and present simple. It includes 14 words and the corresponding description of the job as the clue. Words: Postman, seller, ha ...
An easy worksheet for elementary learners comparing the use of the present simple and the present continuous. You can also use it as a test to check if your students have understood the difference ...
This activity will help your students practice in picture discussion. Also They can revise weather vocabulary, seasons vocabulary and Present Simple and Continuous.
The worksheet called "My Own Personal Robot" helps to work at "be going..." structure (positive and negative forms) when speaking about plans for future and also to discuss some questions concerni ...
Simple exercise on there is/are. It will be usefull as for children so for adults. It contains 40 sentences on there is/ there are) It can be used in classroom as a extra activity for the student ...
This is a useful worksheet to work with simple present as well as some adjectives. it is a very simple and useful song that can be used to discuss topics such as poverty and lack of solidarity in ...
Children write about their last holidays - great for practicing the simple past. This does not have to be a real story - they can write an imaginary one, too. Also, if you are teaching the future ...
Do this in pairs. One partner gets the first page and the other gets the second page. Partner A asks partner B questions using the Past Simple (e.g. ‘Where did you go ?’).  ...
This is useful to practice listening, writing and pronunciation of verbs in the past. Besides, it is a beautiful song that can be used with different levels. You can always combine it with some ba ...
A worksheet to practice these two tenses with various rules of usage. You can give it to your students during the lesson or as homework. Hope they will like it )
This is a worksheet which practises the conjugation of Present Simple, Past Simple, Present Continuous, Past Continuous, Present Perfect, Past Perfect, Simple Future and Simple Conditional tenses ...
There are 3 ways on how to use the past continuous. 2 pages with exercises, questions and writing sentences. Exs.: 1) I was talking on the phone when there was a blackout. 2) I was talking on the ...
This is a drill activity to get the students to practise Past Continuous. Choose a time in the past (e.g. Yesterday at 9 a.m.) and get the students to mime what they were doing at the time using c ...
This worksheet is planned to motivate students to introduce themselves, giving some personal information and talking about their hobbies,their leisure time and their family. I have used it for my ...
It's a review of the most common writing mistakes. Pupils are asked to read a letter and correct the underlined mistakes; grammar, punctuation, word order, spelling, tense, word form ... They are ...
A classical very-well known song ideal to revise vocabulary to describe places. Students listen, fill in the gaps and put the lines in order. Then they answer some questions about the overall mean ...
Students read the text and have to use "should have" and "could have" to discuss the obvious mistakes Marsha made on her job interview. People preparing for a job interview will also learn about h ...
The main aim of this worksheet is to teach the verb To Be in the Simple Past to the complete beginners. Its purpose is to work the way in which it is made the affirmative, the negative, the questi ...
This is a wheel of tenses. It helps students to understand when they should use this or that tense. The wheel can be printed, cut out and assembled to form a handy guide for grammar tense usage. T ...
I usually use this worksheet to make sure my students have an overall insight into all English tenses. Concept checking questions always work well :) This worksheet is designed for group work. Af ...
Fold your piece of paper along the line. Write the name of your classmates (one in each line). Unfold your piece of paper and read the sentences. Do you think he or she has done something like tha ...
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