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 worksheets will help you to practice the present continuous tense. Students should write a blog using the information about different festivals (Chinese New Year, Holi and Up Helly Aa Fire Fe ...
I use this activity to make students read and pay attention to what they're reading. They can play read and mime (in which for each blank, the teacher shows the word to one student and s/he has to ...
This blank-filling activity is great for students who are learning present simple and present continuous. Appropriate for young learners who know the strucutures and recognize the use of these ver ...
Studying simple past can be interesting if this is aided with images. One way is to show them slides like these ones. These slides feature verbs in photos. Have your students use past simple wh ...
Display these slides on LCD projector. This was specifically developed for intermediate learners. However, can also be used by advanced students. Have students study each slide and then allow t ...
The aim of this worksheet is to improve students' speaking skills. A teacher can print and cut the topic cards, then give it to students and let them ask and answer the questions in pairs. It take ...
This is a worksheet for teaching the past simple and present perfect tense. There are two different activities in which students are asked to write the two sentences as one using when a ...
A worksheet about the topic: future with going to. It's the second part of a previous worksheet. Students take a look at the pictures and should follow the example and drill the exercises. There a ...
This worksheet provides revision of the past simple tense. It is based on lyrics of famous Eagle's song Hotel California. First students create past simple of some verbs (irregular and regul ...
This PowerPoint contains one story in two different tenses. First, the grammar focuses on present simple. Second, the grammar focuses on past simple. Each one follows with some CCQs to check the l ...
A worksheet about the topic: future with going to. Students are given rules about this structure and there is a table with examples in the affirmative, interrogative and negative. Next students ar ...
This powerpoint is about the Titanic disaster. From real photos of survivors, students have to make sentences using past continuous to explain what people were doing when the Titanic hit the icebe ...
This Powerpoint is made for pre-intermediate students. It's about verbs of taste (like, enjoy, love) and expressions of taste (to be fond of, to be interested in, to be crazy about). Students lear ...
This worksheet is to help students to identify the future perfect tenses and how they are used. It starts off with a reading section in which all the different future forms are in bold. Here the t ...
This power-point presentation presents daily activities. It is appropriate for teaching daily routines and reviewing the present simple tense. It is suitable for elementary students and also young ...
Use this activity to review or introduce present continuous to your students. The worksheet is divided into 3 exercises. Each exercise will work for a different area of knowledge. E.g. In ex ...
It includes activities to revise the content of the movie Divergent. I prepared some activities to do before watching, while watching and after watching the film. It worked really well with elemen ...
Here's a simple worksheet for teaching or revising the simple past at pre-intermediate level. It is a song by the Beatles, a very famous British band from the 60’s. Students are as ...
A funny poem to practice the topic "Daily routines" and past simple. The students are to read the poem and match the pictures with the verse or just learn the poem by heart. This worksheet will be ...
First person singular, present simple + vocabulary. Pupils study the voc uploaded by another teacher and do the test. Daily routines like : get up, have breakfast, do the ironing, do homework, tak ...
This board game is the second one in the series of "What's In Your..." games. It aims at revising food and drink items (apples, cucumbers, tomatoes, juice, coke/soda, sausages, chicken, meat, chee ...
This 2-page worksheet contains four activities for you to practice daily routines with your students. The grammar focuses on present simple. There are four activities in which students are asked t ...
This is a sentence building exercise that requires dice. In pairs or groups of three, have students roll the dice and then write the corresponding word in each column. They should also say the sen ...
This worksheet is for students who are practicing there is/there are there is/are together with prepositions and school subjects. I find it very useful in my classroom. In the last picture student ...
This PowerPoint contains some activities related to daily routines, such as get up, go to bed, eat breakfast, etc. The grammar focuses on present simple, particularly singular subjects. Also, it i ...
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