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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I used a great video from http://www.eslvideo.com/esl_video_quiz_low_intermediate.php?id=13279 and typed the script. Based on it I designed a listening comprehension worksheet with tasks tha ...
Taken from different workheets, this worksheet is designed mainly to practice WH-questions, do, does, and short answers using verb "to be". Very useful for 13-17 years old. Most of this is f ...
This worksheet was created as a fun way to introduce or review the simple past. Students must fill in the present form of the verb and then the simple past form. The activity is meant to resemble ...
This is a Poem that I have created this morning only,to help my students learn the daily routine and the present simple tense. You can ask the students to underline all the verbs in present simple ...
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This is a worksheet I use to practice verbs in present continuous. Students have to write what the mice are doing. Then they have an enjoyable who is who activity to do, and finally they are asked ...
Print and cut the cards. First, I asked the students to match the infinitive and past participle of the verbs (small groups). Then, we used the cards to play Memory. Each student gets a turn ...
Students have to write the correct form of the word - a verb. This song practices mainly past simple forms. There are no follow up activities - just the listening comprehension task. Students list ...
Level : Pre-intermediate. Skills : Listening/Speaking/Writing Instruction : the students are divided into a group of 4. The worksheet is given to each student. They will watch 'The Indian ...
In this activity students first watch the video and then they work on comprehension activities. You can use this video clip to practice countries and nationalities, information about football play ...
This activity includes facts about Martina Stoessel. Students are asked to read the article and answer simple questions. You may include additional questions and exercises. The worksheet can be u ...
A number of sentences to complete. I use this for a revision of the past simple, past continuous, present perfect simple, present perfect continuous, and past perfect simple. Reported speech also ...
This is a power point presentation on the formation of past simple. It was prepared for the primary school pupils in order to revise the past simple tense. It includes simple examples in all the f ...
This lesson is excellent for revising the vocabulary of daily routine and telling the time. Students can listen to 3 English teachers describing their typical days. After listening exercises there ...
It offers a brief text of about 230 words about the problems of keeping New Year's resolutions. It was adapted from an online magazine. It has pre-reading and post-reading activities. It includes ...
This is a simple activity which can be used as a warm up. In this case, we are working with Argentina's map. But you can adpat it to your own context. Ask your students to colour in the map the pl ...
This worksheet has different tasks. The first one is an activity on spotting the difference and writing sentences in present continuous. Then, there is a task to complete questions. Thirdly, ...
This set of activities is very simple and they are intended to revise personal questions, past simple as well as present continuous. There is a task to work with Cinderella's story. You can start ...
This worksheet is intended to revise with your students personal questions as well as routine in the first and/or third person. You can work with it as you please. That is, you can work with ...
In this activity, you'll find a chart in which students will have to complete the sentences following the first conditional structure. They'll also have to decide which topic the prediction is abo ...
This is a simple exercise in which students have to complete the fortune teller's predictions. You can use this activity as a warm-up, lead-in or closure activity. You can even elicit the Future S ...
This is a set of 40 flashcards, they are all regular verbs, but they don't have written verbs underneath them, but I included the list of them in present at the beggining of this presentation. You ...
This is a set of 40 flashcards, they have some nice drawings and the verbs underneath them. All of these verbs are in present simple and past simple. You can use it as well as a Power Point presen ...
A simple bingo game using present perfect. Particularly suited to Japanese students in middle school. I usually ask the students to stand up and speak to one another. They cannot use a name ...
This is a power point presentation about thirty common sea animals. There is a fun or surprising fact about each animal. It includes different animals such as jellyfish, seahorse,sponge, lobster,d ...
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