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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Another version of the Guess Who game, made to practice the following structures: What (sports/food) do you like?, How old are you?, When is your birthday?, Are you (Max)? To the left of the pictu ...
In this worksheet students have to complete the sentences with the correct tense (past continuous or past simple). Then they are asked to match the sentences with the pictures. This worksheet is g ...
This worksheet is based on the song by Lily Allen called I'm a Knight. There are several activities your students can do after listening to the song and watching the video. Students learn the voca ...
This worksheet is designed for beginner ESL students who wish to have additional practice with simple present/present continuous. By using a word bank, students must decide on the correct word as ...
A simple activity for students to practice present simple and present continuous (sorry, no answer key). Good for reviews and classes were you need to show the difference between the two tenses. P ...
This worksheet is based on a dialogue I found on Youtube. A man and a woman talk about their photographs. There is a gap-filling exercise in connection with the dialogue and some warm up activitie ...
I use this PowerPoint presentation with groups of young learners at the lessons dedicated to famous people. Students have to make sentences using given information about a famous person and put th ...
A colourful worksheet for practising 'have got' and 'haven't got' in the 3rd singular and 3rd plural form. Three characters are presented: John and Mary and Katie. The pupils are asked to see and ...
This worksheet provides 10 simple sentences that can help you pretest your students' prior knowledge/understanding of the simple present tense. Each sentence should be completed by choosing one co ...
This is a test which consists of text comprehension: true/false sentences and questions on the text; matching exercise related to the text ; crossword puzzle: wild animals. Grammar: Modal verbs ...
Worksheet about the pilot episode of Friends for intermediate students. Questions about the content, grammar and identification of vocabulary. Students should watch the episode at least one time b ...
This worksheet contains the explanation of the past perfect contionuous tense and some exercises for its drilling (which I prefer to be done in pairs) like matching, completing/finishing the sente ...
This is a Christmas worksheet with simple activities. The activities include reading a short text about Santa who got stuck in a chimney which is based on the film "The Santa Claus" with Tim Alle ...
This PowerPoint shows some basic daily routines like brushing teeth, eating breakfast, feeding pets, playing video games, etc. The grammar focuses on Present Simple. It is appropriate for elementa ...
It's about V2 forms. There are many verbs and students need to remember and fill in the blanks. My students really enjoyed listening to it. It's an amazing song from the movie "The Big Lebowski." ...
In this worksheet you will find a handy summary of the rules of the following tenses: present simple, present progressive (continuous), past simple, past progressive (continuous) and future. These ...
This worksheet contains a brief explanation and two exercises. This worksheet does not have solution because it's too easy so that students can understand easily what future tenses can be used. I ...
This worksheet will help students practice definite & indefinite frequencies by interviewing their friends "How many times do you ...?" and "How often do you ...?". It also provides some ...
A nice worksheet for elementary students. There are 3 different exercises based on the video on Window on Britain, which you can find on youtube. Quite informative for this level. It can be also u ...
This is a very basic worksheet for elementary students that have had only a little writing practice. There is an example of how to write the first part of the sentence (I want to be a) at the top ...
This worksheet is for young learners practising questions about their possessions, giving short answers and finding students in the class with the same answers, e.g. Have you got a kite? Yes, I h ...
How do we form present perfect and when do we use it? A handout with grammar explanations and exercises. There is an exit slip at the end of the lesson to check the understanding of the students. ...
Dog and the Butcher is a short silent cartoon about the touching relationship of the naughty dog and its sometimes strict owner. The worksheet consists of two tasks: the first one is to match the ...
The Stop game comes from a video I watched about TEFL , from BridgeTEFL. In this game, students use vocabulary they know and verb tenses they know to write a single word (or maybe a half-phrase) i ...
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