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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Song activity to practice the present perfect tense. There's a table to be completed with the forms of the verbs given that are going to be used to complete the lyrics. It's a worksheet to wo ...
It's a presentation showing the usage of past tense in detail. You can both show the form of past tense, how to form questions, negative and affirmative sentences. There are also picture ...
With this presentation you can both show the usage of past simple and compare it with present. It shows both forms and gives some examples using up-to-date pictures with the characters they may li ...
This PPT is about free time activities and hobbies. Students have to look at the pictures and complete the sentences with the correct verb (the options are given). They can practice present simple ...
This is a conversation grid activity designed to encourage the correct use of simple past and past continuous verb forms in a relaxed conversational setting. Students walk around the room asking ...
In this worksheet present perfect is used to express the idea of completion or achievement. The topic is a dream house. There are four activities, the first one is for the vocabulary,then st ...
This is a worksheet which is aimed to revise and practise the differences between the past simple and past continuous tenses. Students are asked to complete 35 different sentences putti ...
Practice the irregular verb forms of the past participle with the help of this well-known game. Including instructions, 3x3 and 4x4 grids, infinitive cards and (optional) reverse sides. You can us ...
This worksheet is for low level adult students to practise talking about their free time activities and when they do them. Additionally, mingling to find the students to whom the sentences belong ...
This worksheet is for low level young learners practising questions with Have you got any …, please? and giving short answers 'Yes, I have. No, I haven't.' as part of a shopping role-play. ...
This is a Power Point presentation with nice visuals. It has more pictures than writing, so it can be both entertaining and educational. It was created many years ago but proved to be effective.Th ...
The worksheet contains a brief history of evolution, a brainstorming activity, discussion questions, a story for dictation (dictogloss) and additional pictures to be used. The focus is the differe ...
Activity provides a chance to drill 3rd person singular verb forms (15 different verbs). T asks students to complete gaps first, and then plays the song focusing on pronunciation, singing al ...
This presentations focus on the monsters' description using the verb 'have got' and vocabulary connected with body parts, colours and some adjectives. In slides 3-6 ss have to guess which monster ...
This is a simple writing prompt for children to practice present perfect. They are asked to write what Catty Noir (a charcter from this cartoon) has done and has never done in her life. Imho it's ...
I find this worksheet useful for students to practice. It has a brief explanation at the beginning, rules and different exercises. Students need to have some background knowledge about the simple ...
In this document you will find two activities to write predictions about famous people. In the first exercise, the ss must match 2 pictures, which are related, to come up with a logical predictio ...
This is a worksheet for teaching or revising the differences between going to and present continuous. Recommended for pre-intermediate students who are asked to change the sentences given into&nbs ...
The worksheet contains situations like “You’ve bought a dog.” Each student gets a situation and doesn’t show it to the others. The task is to make a riddle using the phrase ...
I use this task to help my students practise creative writing integrating the use of 'be going to'. They need to imagine they're going on a perfect school trip, brainstorm ideas and write a ...
Unit 4 test concentrates on testing of past continuous and past simple, matching the halves of the sentences according to their meaning with past simple and continuous, making questions according ...
This is a very simple and easy worksheet for teaching or revising the structure used to/ didn't use to at elementary level. There are two different activities in which students are asked to c ...
The game "Who's the murderer?" introduces the crime scene and the victim. Then there are pieces of evidence and the list of suspects. Read the introduction to the ss. Place the strips with evidenc ...
This is a card game in which pupils speak English, try to get as many identical pairs as they can, try to win and have fun. Meanwhile they practice asking questions and giving short answers. I mad ...
With this song you can reinforce personal pronouns and present simple auxiliaries. First discuss with them some warming up questions related to family, then introduce some verbs, listen to the so ...
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