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 a song worksheet about the song A day in the life by The Beatles. You have different activities to do during the listening (choosing the correct word/putting verb into past tense/ordering ...
This is a reading comprehension worksheet for teaching or revising daily routines related vocabulary and the present simple tense. Recommended for pre-intermediate students who are asked to r ...
Simple past tense questions in the form of a jazz chant. Provides an opportunity for students to practice/ revise the simple past tense before going on to write about their own past activities. A ...
Students complete an inventory of likes and dislikes on a provided sheet. The teacher then collects the unnamed sheets, mixes them up and redistributes the sheets to students in groups. Each per ...
This activity is ideal to review the simple past with regular and irregular verbs, as well as to promote discussion about homosexuality.The worksheet contains 6 activities: 1. Pre-listening q ...
This is an excellent opportunity to test your student's knowledge . It is recommended to pre-intermediate to intermediate students . It contains a chart where they have to write the infinitive , p ...
There are two parts in this worksheet. Students should first write down the past tense forms of verbs in the song. Then, they listen to the song and fill in the blanks by using those past tense ve ...
This is a reading task made when I was a trainee. I adapted a newspaper article from The Star. The word 'gotong-royong' means to do an activity (usually cleaning a place) together as a community ( ...
This is the corrected version of a woksheet of mine. In this worksheet, students have some exercises with the lyrics of the song "I will survive". First, they write the simple past of the verbs i ...
This worksheet is about likes and dislikes and the use of the zero article. Students have to learn and repeat a few words and a few verbs, they can tell the class what they like and what they don' ...
It is a worksheet in which students can practise the use of I like and I don't like in a meaningful way through pictures to help them express themselves at this early stage without struggling for ...
It is the daily routine of a mermaid written in present simple with tasks to practise reading and the thirds person singular. students can listen to a teacher reading it or read it themselve ...
This is a reading comprehension exercise in which students are required to look for specific information. The grammar content of the reading is the present perfect tense, so that ss practice writi ...
The title is unique and meaningful. This is recommended for beginner ss. Teachers may use it in a 45min to 1hr class. In the 1st activity ss match pictures to descriptive sentences. 2nd activity i ...
This is a speaking activity that you can use to ask your students when teaching them wh-questions. It can be used from beginner onwards but is best suited for pre-intermediate. It would helpful fo ...
This worksheet has a lot of exercises to practice present simple and continuous. If you have students that need to practice for the exam at school you can work with them this worksheet. You will s ...
A worksheet for elementary students to start practicing basic self introductions. In this worksheet, the students write three sentences including their name, something they like and somethin ...
This worksheet contains simple yet effective practice to assess your students level and their understanding of the basics. It covers grammar, comprehension and writing skills and more. T ...
This is a worksheet for revising future forms: will and going to at elementary level. There are 3 different activities in which students are asked to write A if the decision is made at the moment ...
In this funny activity you will find a word search that provides the verbs you need to complete some statements in present. There are also two other grammar activities aimed to practice the rule o ...
Students should write affirmative, interrogative and negative sentences using the structures 'there is' and 'there are'. They also practice clothing and furniture vocabulary. A short explanation o ...
This is a two page worksheet for teaching or revising the past simple tense at elementary level. There are 3 different activities in which students are asked to write past simple of the verbs ...
This is an activity for elementary/basic students based on the 1995 song "One of us" by Jean Osborne. They should choose one of the options in parenthesis. The teacher may repeat the song, make th ...
Watching movies is a good way to practice several skills. We can firstly discuss the main message of the movie in order to check understanding and also to speak.This worksheet is for children for ...
Verb to be simple present exercises for elementary. The worksheet contains 6 exercises most of them kind of filling the blanks activities but there're some exceptions. The sheet is great for a up- ...
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