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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A workshhet based on The Hunchback of Notre Dame cartoon, provides students fun have/has got practice of affirmative and negative forms. Students will need to watch a short summary video of the fa ...
This worksheet is to practice different tenses, passive voice and some other structures. Cut the table out, divide the rectangles off and distribute them to your students. They are supposed to say ...
This worksheet is intended as a speaking exercise to recap and use present tense grammar including present perfect tenses, mostly in the third person. It includes a graphic organizer for the stude ...
It's about present continuous. It's a song, by the band The Wanted. It's good for the students to practice the ING form and the listening. It's a very easy song to learn, I suggest that you read t ...
This is a 2-page worksheet for revising the present simple tense at elementary level. There are 6 different activities in which students are asked to choose the correct option, rewrite the se ...
This game helps demonstrate and practice the difference between the past simple and past continuous tenses. Split your class into two teams. Explain what the word charades means – us ...
This is a simple worksheet to practice the usage of "have" and "has." There are two identical activities on a single page - print and cut into two parts, give to two students.
The purpose of this song is to practise past simple and to enjoy listening to it by doing easy matching and filling exercises based on pictures. It is mainly targeted to an elementary level but i ...
Basic activity for the first class. Ss are asked to complete a text with some personal information. They have tips in Spanish to help them understand the main vocabulary. It is a writing exercise, ...
This worksheet is based on the Bear Grylls` TV series "Escape From Hell".
The worksheet follows the first (on some websites it is marked as second) episode "Snow"in order of narration. It is ...
Students will learn the meaning of some common words for their daily routines. The activity can be used with flash cards, cliparts, photos, etc. The worksheet has the answers and so the teacher on ...
This is meant as a one-off vocabulary and past tenses practice lesson. The calendar is filled with on-this-day facts with one item blacked out. In groups the students put the removed words back, u ...
This is a pretty easy worksheet for teaching or revising the simple past of the verb have. There are 2 different activities in which students are asked to change the sentences into the past and fi ...
Simple activity for practicing do and does in questions. You need a dice. Get students to throw the dice twice and make a question using the numbers they roll, first choosing do or does, ask a que ...
It´s a power point presentation with the structure of future simple and be+going to, (afirmative, negative, questions), it also explains when you have to use them and provide some exam ...
Finding exercise about past tenses is a difficult task so, I create this exercise where ss will be able to practice grammar rules, listening and reading. In the first exercise ss match the tenses ...
With this activity you can practice regular and irregular verbs. Before using this hand out I suggest you to play a song guessing game, where ss coulg get engaged with the activity, so when they l ...
This worksheet was created to make my students think of bullying and Cyber bullying, and how it affects our society. It was also created to help them with the pronunciation of the ed ending o ...
A set of grammar tasks to revise different grammar points learned in the previous level (3): supply the right options of varied tenses and linkers+report 3 direct statements +change to passive voi ...
This presentation helps you teaching basic vocabulary for the topic of houses and flats when you teach beginner level students. You can also practise the structure there's a/there isn't a..., prep ...
Extensive listening practice for America Headway Elementary. The file provides the link where audio tracks are available for download. For each track I wrote the related questions. Exercises range ...
Learning irregular verbs one by one with their translation can often be frustating and rather boring. I suggest to use this poem to learn and understand irregular verbs in context. Students could ...
This is an easy worksheet for revising the verb to be at elementary level. There are 4 activities in which students are asked to complete with am (‘m), is (‘s) or are, write the c ...
This is a pretty easy worksheet for revising the simple past of the verb to be at elementary level. There are 5 different activities in which students are asked to fill in the blank spaces wi ...
This is a layout in the form of a table of the main principles of building the simple present tense, including different forms that might be used in the third person singular including its pronoun ...
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