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 is one of the jazz chants I use with my elementary students.I was inspired by Carolyn Graham's work on teaching language through fun chants. I mainly use it to get my students remember the ir ...
This is a PowerPoint for teaching present continuous for future arrangements. It is designed for elementary levels and it includes an activity to check the learners' understanding. You may find it ...
This power point is appropriate for teaching the past progressive tense. It starts with simple past to activate students background knowledge, then present past progressive, question form, and "wh ...
This is a good way to practice some irregular verbs in the past and in the past participle with sentences. One page requires only the past tense and the other page requires the use of have or has ...
It is a listening activity based on Ed Sheeran's song, and I used it with both adults and teenagers,as the lyrics are meaningful and easy to understand. It is really useful to revise irregula ...
This Power Point presentation is useful for basic daily actions such as: reading, sleeping, cleaning, taking a bath, shaving, eating , watching TV and cooking. This is appropriate for young learne ...
This worksheet is intended for students in early stages of primary education. It will help them to internalise typical vocabulary of clothes, colours or asking and answering about people's clothes ...
A powerpoint that explains the grammar rules for all the different English tenses. It contains examples, spelling rules, and shows the students how to form the verbs in normal, interrogative, and ...
This exercise is suggested for students of pre-intermediate level to discuss their experiences about love using the present perfect tense, introducing an Idiom "head over heels" and love definitio ...
This is a set of memo cards. They can be used in present continuous or present simple practice. Topic is mainly: in the park. My students make sentences with them, or play memo game. I use p ...
This is a fill in the blank worksheet of the song "I see the light" from the Disney hit Tangled. While I was working with this song I found out that it's practically all about present continuous ...
This worksheet includes different structures of "There is and There are". For instance, There is a ....., There is an .....,There are some, There is some, Are there any...? Is there any....? There ...
This worksheet is useful for reviewing simple present (esp for third-person). and asking about time. It contains two questions which are based on pictures, and one writing task. This worksheet is ...
This is a grammar worksheet, that helps you to find out the gaps in your student´s knowledge. The task is to open the brackets using the appropriate grammar tense in interrogative, negative ...
This worksheet was designed for testing the beginner level students' competency in various grammar subjects such as wh-questions(what, where, why, who,whose,when,how), there is/there are, how much ...
This worksheet is intended to help identify the different subject pronouns and their respective verb "to be" in affirmative, negative and question form. It includes spaces to write examples and sm ...
This worksheet contains some vocabulary items related to different foods. It includes two activities to review present simple. It is appropriate for elementary language learners and you may find i ...
This worksheet is designed for the beginner levels which contains 3 parts. In part A, students are asked to use the correct forms of 'to be verb' in present tense. In part B, students are required ...
This PowerPoint contains some farm animals, such as cat, frog, horse, etc. and what they are doing. It is appropriate for both absolute beginners and elementary levels. You may find it useful at t ...
This is a pairs activity to practice the possessive with 's. They ask (and answer) each other if the items belong to the people mentioned. The vocabulary is very simple. And while they're at it ...
I decided to share with you this worksheet, because it's really hard for children to make questions correctly, that's why I've created these cards for my students and they really loved them; on ...
This is a worksheet based on Goofy - The Art of Skiing. The grammar is present continuous. It is designed for absolute beginners of learning English. It contains a yes-or-no activity. You can down ...
This PowerPoint includes some actions at the playground such as swinging, sliding, running, etc. The grammar is present continuous and it is appropriate for elementary levels. It also contains two ...
This power-point presentation presents clothing related vocabulary. It also contains some pictures which you can ask students to describe, e.g. "What is s/he wearing?". This power-point prese ...
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