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 worksheet will help teachers to give the students some clothes vocabulary. There are pictures with descriptions. You can find some exercises to drill new words. The worksheet is for Russian s ...
Practice asking questions with your students. In this worksheet there is an information about four people. Working in pairs your students will practice asking and answering questions. Can be used ...
This worksheet can help you to improve speaking skills using present perfect and past simple. You teach students to get more details and information in the conversation about past experience. You ...
This worksheet is a revision of tenses: present simple, present continuous, present perfect, past simple and future. There are 2 exercises: The first one is to put the verbs in the correct column ...
This is a role-play worksheet: a press-conference with Angelina Jolie. The main purpose of this activity is a) revising question formation in present simple, past simple, present perfect (for the ...
This worksheet is for low level adult or teenage students to practise talking about past daily habits. Students mingle to find out who the sentences belong to using past simple questions with 'Did ...
A lesson plan that can be used as an inspiration for creating "will / going to" themed business English lesson. The aim is a practical use of the particular grammar and at the same time student t ...
Jamie Cullum - Don´t Stop the Music ( Rihanna´s cover). This song worksheet can be used to check if students can distinguish between similar verbs-ING sounds. This is a sim ...
I divide activities around this worksheet into three parts: 1) First we watch the food chant. Ss write down sentences about the food they like/don't like. 2) Ss look at the picture with ...
This is a pretty simple for teaching or revising the past simple of the verb to be. Recommended for elementary students who are asked to complete the sentences with the past simple of the ver ...
This is a drill exercise of present simple you can offer to your pupils. I included a key as well so the pupils can bear the responsibility of correcting the exercise and ask questions concerning ...
This worksheet is based on the cartoon serial ‘Minuscules’. The cartoon serial ‘Minuscules’ (France, 2007) which is the collection of 3-5 minute mini-stories. The dynamic ...
The test is for the 4th graders. It contains basic questions using structures such as can/have/do and wh-questions. The grammar areas are: possesive 's, adjectives describing people, present ...
The following file involves a test that deals with present progressive (continuous). I used the exam for 8th graders and less advanced 9th graders. You can find multiple questions there ...
Beginner introduction to the present perfect tense. Contains an explanation of its use, "formula" (affirmative, negative and interrogative), examples and keywords (divided into two categories, tim ...
This is a worksheet with a song to practice the past simple tense. The song is I will survive by Gloria Gaynor. First, students write past simple of some verbs. Then, they listen to the song ...
Under Pressure (cover) is a worksheet based on the famous Queen´s song. This is a simple listening activity where students have to distiguish the sounds between two similar verbs and it ca ...
It´s a song worksheet designed to check present continuous knowledge through a pop song. It´s a simple listening activity where students have to fill in the song gaps using pre ...
It is a simple listening activity where students have to fill in the song gaps using words there´s and there is. It can be used to teach the pronunciation difference between there is ...
I needed a practice sheet for my EFL 4th graders learning about past simple. I couldn't find one that covers all three of those verbs so I made one. It is a simple, clear worksheet, good to print ...
Roar, a song by Katy Perry to get the students to find the verbs in the past, regular and irregular verbs. A fairly easy listening exercise for pre-intermedite students. They have to listen to the ...
The test includes present simple, present continuous and past simple of regular and irregular verbs. It allows a teacher to learn ss' level of knowledge of the mentioned topics.
First, students read a text about a best friend: what he does and what he doesn't do. Then they classify the underlined verbs in simple present as affirmative or negative and translate their infin ...
This is a very simple and easy worksheet for teaching or revising the present perfect tense at elementary level. There's an easy activity in which students are asked to complete twenty diffe ...
This worksheet is about Irish Leprechauns. There are three activities, the first one is a filling-gap exercise, pupils have to look at the small images and write the missing words, then they can r ...
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