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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This worksheet is aimed at practicing all future tenses, some sentences are very simple, others are quite difficult. There are 18 sentences to practice in this worksheet. Key is included. Have a ...
This worksheet was created to check your students' knowledge in the usage of Past Tenses. There are 22 sentences - some are short and rather easy, others are quite long and difficult and therefore ...
It has lots of easy verbs and pictures. It's perfect for children! It is about frogs, the activity consists in writing in the gaps the verb between brackets in the present continuous form and then ...
Future Simple and "to be going to"
Activities:
Put the verbs in brackets into the future simple
Write these sentences, putting the verbs into the future simple
What will y ...
The yellow submarine by the beatles is completely a special one if put together with some TPR ... It helps the teacher recycle the smartest way & not the hardest way... it's one of the oldies ...
It has a revision of adjectives like straight ,curly, little, thin, big, fat, small, etc. Write has got or is.
Example: Mark has got a dog.My dog is brown. Write "a" where's necessary.
It's a st ...
This reading activity is going to help your students to revise the form of the verb to be in present tense. On the other hand you can find present simple tense and you can reinforce the use of fr ...
Describe the people shown in the pictures. Describe different features, hair, eyes, nose, mouth, height, complexion, weight, attractiveness,etc. There is an example given to guide the student. Use ...
This worksheet deals with Simple Present (routines) Good to revise/practise spelling and frequency adverbs and expressions. First students fill in the gaps, then they listen and check and finally ...
I used this worksheet after reading Rumpelstiltskin with my 10-12 year old sts. Can you imagine their excitement when they realized Rumpelstiltskin and Shrek met! What's the matter with Shrek? Wha ...
This is an alternative worksheet for the song 'baby' by Justin Bieber. The other worksheet for this song (on this website) is primarily a gap-fill/listening exercise, this one has a gap-fill as we ...
I've used this after reading the story of King Arthur. This worksheet includes various activities to do before and after watching "The Sword in the Stone"( matching, gap-filling and answering q ...
This worksheet is created to practice Past Simple and Past Perfect in order to understand the sequence of these sentences. Worksheet contains 22 sentences. May be used as a test or as homework for ...
This is another option if you want to have a 'fix you' lesson (there's already a very good lesson on this website for this song). This lesson is aimed at the lower spectrum of students compared to ...
With this worksheed students are going to be able to describe and distinguish not only new vocabulary but also some kinds of musical genres. this can be used after explain some about the eight mu ...
This is a review handout for an elementary group of tweens I had. Working with Harry Potter as a theme, it recycles talking about routines (house chores; Simple Present; adverbs of frequency; how ...
This worksheet is to be used with a snippet (scene 5) from Ice Age. Intended for kids who had a movie project going on, it teaches the words for the animals in the video and recycles "talking abou ...
It's an interesting way to revise the word order and understanding of questions. You could change the questions depending of the level. The children enjoy answering and pretending they are on a re ...
A major hit with adults, this worksheet is for Frank Sinatra or Liza Minelli's "New York, New York". It starts with listening for the gist. Then it works on the meaning of some expressions from th ...
This worksheet is to be used with Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight". It practices sequence linkers and simple present. It includes a speaking activity and comprehension questions, besides the gra ...
I have prepared a nice colourful worksheet to revise the general knowledge of Present Simple rules. There are four tasks, revising choosing the correct form of the verb, making questions to the gi ...
Flashforward's Episode 1 is really engaging from the very beginning! This worksheet includes spotting idioms and phrases, answering questions, filling in the blanks and circling the correct word ...
Tired of doing the same old boring listening exercises? Need something to regain your students interest in English? Try this activity for students to practice their listening skills. It will he ...
Life circles is a communicative activity which is great for practicing the difference between Present Perfect and Past Simple. At first, Ss answer a set of questions in different order. Afterwards ...
This worksheet will help you to drill past simple and past progressive.There are many sentences which help you to drill these two tenses and also there is an explanation of using these tenses.Ther ...
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