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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Student a is describing his/her postcard until student b is able to recognise the country. Or student A is talking about stereotypes of a given country and the rest has to guess which country it i ...
Grab the cards is a fun game. The teacher puts the cards on the desk. He says the present simple verbs and the students grab the past simple verbs. The one with more cards is the winner. Hope it h ...
It's a very useful Powerpoint presentation for either to introduce past simple regular verbs or as a follow-up activity to teach simple . Teacher asks students in pairs to ask and answer the que ...
It's a very useful Powerpoint presentation for either to introduce past simple irregular verbs or as a follow-up activity to teach simple . Teacher asks students in pairs to ask and answer the q ...
A board game with pictures and signs for positive, negative, yes or no question, and WH question sentences. Students just need to throw the dice and make sentences based on the pictures and signs. ...
This is a board game created to practice 'to be going to' structure. Students need to fill in the gaps, answer the questions or make their own sentences to describe pictures. I found the blank bo ...
I have prepared it for a clever boy of the 4th class (11 years old). There is a text divided in some fragments about the history of the Victory Day and Arctic Convoys. The vocabulary is translated ...
This worksheet is about animals. It contains two activities for grammar: present simple andpast simple. The students are asked to make questions and write answers. It is appropriate for elementary ...
This is a PowerPoint Presentation, which tells the difference between the usage of present perfect and present perfect continuous. The rules are stated clearly with examples and illustrations. Stu ...
Balloon volleyball game for elementary students. Consists of a basic description of the game plus some variations and suggestions. The basic game is just to play volleyball with a balloon, and say ...
Students will rewrite each sentence using a different verb tense. A past, present, and future worksheet. Research tells us that studying verb tenses is a great way to learn the fundamental aspects ...
This is a grammar test for upper intermediate and advanced students. Teacher divides students into groups and nominates each group to answer the questions. It's a multiple choice test which covers ...
It's a writing activity for students to practise present simple (third person singular). This activity will help students practise third person singular s. Students write the text and swap their w ...
It's an interesting speaking activity for students. It will give students an opportunity to personalise the topic and practise present simple third person singular. Students enjoy speaking about t ...
This power-point presentation can be used for teaching how to talk about likes and dislikes, what you want, and using a, an , and some before nouns. It also contains food related vocabulary items ...
This song by Rayana Brandy is particularly useful to practise the use of present perfect with the word " ever". Her voice is very clear and the song speed is slow enough for the students to follo ...
It's a nice and simple song worksheet. This song is suitable for students to learn simple present verbs. Students have to identify the missing verbs and write them in the correct gap. Young learne ...
A thorough revision of past tenses and narrative tenses, with concept checking and practice. Here, students revise their knowledge of past tenses (simple, continuous and perfect), check functional ...
This is a beautiful song by Coldplay. I find it very useful for learning irregular verbs. Students have to complete the lyrics with the missing verbs. The verbs are in simple present and students ...
It's a very simple song worksheet to work with past simple and vocabulary. Students will love this song, You can watch the video after listening. I included the key. https://www.youtube.c ...
There are three tasks in this worksheet. The first exercise is taken from New English File Elementary "True False Show" but I have adapted it for children. They think, if the statements are t ...
It's a nice speaking activity after we have covered family members, countries and nationalities in class. Ask students to write questions they will ask the rest of the students in advance to make ...
This is a fictitious newspaper article about a hit-and-run offence. Students need to complete the text by put the verbs into the correct tense in the active or passive voice. Use to check students ...
This is an Easter worksheet for young learners. They can practise some colours, cardinal numbers and there is/ there are structure. The worksheet involves colouring and drawing Easter eggs, comple ...
The worksheet begins with a reading where a woman talks about herself and what she likes or does not like doing. Then students complete a chart with her personal information. After that, they say ...
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