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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Oral and/or written practice of the Simple Past tense WH question formation. The teacher is meant to give the clues in italics, so that the student may come up with the appropriate WH question. S ...
Great exercise to revise basic grammar, can use it test people, to identify problems and then do a revise of things where they had difficulties. Students really like this exercise.
My workheet has three different type of exercises :Filling in the blanks,Making up correct sentences with the given words and answering the questions about the given reading paragraph
There are activities on Simple Past vs Past Perfect, Simple Past vs Present Perfect, have been to, have gone to, Present simple, present continuous and Present Perfect continuous
This worksheet contains reading activities about a famous family (the Addams), as well as family relationship, and the use of the Present Continuous tense to describe actions in progress.
This is a listening activity to relax and enjoy this beautiful song. Listen and fill in the blanks. Put the words in the correct order Cross out the extra word or phrase in each line.
Students have to read the sentences and write the correct number on the flag. They also have to re-write the sentences and change them by using personal pronouns and nationalities. I hope it's useful.
This is the listening part of the jokes worksheet I've submited earlier. There are two files: one without punchlines and other version with the complete jokes. You can use it with or without the w ...
The first page has some international celebrities and the second one has some flags. The thing is that the students have to match the celebrities with their nationalities. They have to cut them fi ...
A list of 40 personal questions for the practice of asking and answering using the present simple and the verb 'to be'. Teachers can adapt to theirs students' needs.
Feel free to use them as conv ...
There is a fill in the gap exercise in which sts choose the correct option. There are three other exercises in which sts write the verbs in the correct form. They practise affirmative, negative an ...
This worksheet is self explanatory and it can be used to support a class or as a standalone activity. Although the vocabulary section doesn't contain words directly linked to the song it serves as ...
Flags from eight countries and their nationalities. Tasks: Read the texts, complete the information and color the flags. Using your own information complete the chart and draw the flag of your cou ...