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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Tic Tac Toe is an interesting game. This file is for reviewing daily routines and the dictation. The instruction of the game is included. Hope it works.
This file includes a speaking activity for practicing free time activities. It contains an activity in which the students are asked to check the activities that they would like to do on weeke ...
This file contains a speaking activity for practicing daily activities. Put the students into pairs and encourage them to talk. It is designed for elementary level.
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This is a colorful power point contains some questions with have/has and food items. It is useful for elementary level. Hope you enjoy this delicious power point and use it in your classes to chec ...
This is game for reviewing different subjects including daily routines, animals, jobs, and five senses. It is designed for elementary level. Write numbers 1-20 on the other side of each card. Pin ...
The worksheet includes 3 short fragments of the film, there are 4 types of questions: open, multiple choice, fill in the gaps and multi-optional (more than one answer is possible), students need t ...
This power-point presentation is helpful for teaching the past simple and past continuous tense through examples and rules. It includes two tests to check your students understanding. It's a ...
This power-point presentation is appropriate for teaching and reviewing school related action verbs such as: cutting, erasing, reading, using, etc. It's suitable for young learners. It also p ...
This power-point presentation is appropriate for teaching and practicing question formation with "How many", "There is and there are", and also it is helpful for reviewing school supplies related ...
This worksheet is made for children around 6-8 years old to review daily routines vocabulary and telling the time. This worksheet contains three activities: 1. The teacher has to randoml ...
A super simple worksheet for complete beginners. It contains a basic vocabulary (transport, places to stay, things that are used on holidays and useful verbs in past simple). The aim of the works ...
This is a worksheet for practicing the grammar of present simple, present continuous, past simple, and used to. It includes two activities. First, the students are asked to use some cues to write ...
In this worksheet students have to complete the sentences with the correct forms of the verbs in brackets. Then they are asked to match the sentences to the pictures. This worksheet is good for pr ...
Two undemanding grammarl tasks useful for pactising the present simple tense. Students have to fill in the gaps with negative forms or use the given verb to make an affirmative or negative f ...
These two worksheets review mixed past and future tenses using two stories. They both feature examples at the top of each to help the student figure out in which instance each tense should be used ...
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It's an activity practising the use of the present perfect and past simple tense in dialogue form. Students start off with a sample dialogue. They have to match questions and answers. Then t ...
This power-point presentation is pretty helpful for reviewing passive voice (simple present). It also presents some countries and their products and exports. It is appropriate for elementary and p ...
This power-point presentation is related to teaching and reviewing simple present passive. It also includes some examples (with answers) to help you more. It is appropriate for elementary and pre- ...
This power-point presentation is useful for teaching and practicing adverbs of manner and simple past. At the end it contains some activities which can help students to practice more and you can c ...
This power-point presentation is useful for teaching twelve months of the year and seasons. It also helps you to talk about present simple, question formation and a leap year, the activities that ...
This power-point presentation is helpful for teaching outdoor activities, present progressive and question formation. It contains activities such as: roller skating, jumping rope, riding a bike, c ...
An emotional song from the latest episode of Fast and Furious, which is a final tribute to Paul Walker. It can be useful as a tense revision (mainly: past simple, future simple). Students have to ...
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