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 simple text + fill in the gaps with verbs in past simple + comprehension questions. May be used with students of pre-intermediate level after summer discussing holidays. May also ask the ...
This is a worksheet to review simple past and present perfect related to famous singer Rihanna. Students complete the sentences related to her life, write her biography, complete an interview and ...
This worksheet focus on verbs, regular and irregular. Students can have it as a homework to fix verb forms and build up sentences. it is a helpful mix of exercises that can help teachers to help t ...
This is a PDF presentation to introduce vocabulary at the early stages of teaching topic “Ordinary Day”. It is an easy and fun way for elementary learners to get acquainted with ...
Students imagine that they are at a party. By means of cards they have a new identity. Questions help them to be confident while having conversations. Their new images are funny and I'm sure stude ...
In order to give impetus to any lively conversation a teacher needs to equip his students with some bright ideas and images. In this respect, this set of pictures will be a great opportunity for l ...
Just a handout for practice! There are three types of exercises: gap-filling (in both monologue and dialogue contexts), sentence-completion and multiple choice questions. Best used for pre- to i ...
This is a short revision worksheet for the present simple tense with 4 different tasks in which students are asked to fill in the blanks with the correct form of the verbs, rewrite the jumble sent ...
This worksheet is to be used wiht adults and teenagers to introduce the past simple of verb to be and check other past tenses. We can disccuss the life and work of these famous people as well as o ...
A powerpoint/boardgame about two verb tenses: past simple vs past continuous. Students are asked to play this boardgame by choosing the correct tense. They should be able to use these two tenses i ...
At early stages of studying any grammar structure students need to remember the form well, so this way this worksheet will help to work with the future perfect tense. The task is to fill in the ta ...
There are 4 exercises to practice the verb to be in the present simple tense. The students are expected to complete the gaps with the correct form of the verb to be in the present simple tense. ...
Students are presented pictures painted by little kids. They will have to guess what kids’ predictions about the future are and write their ideas in the following table using ‘going to ...
In this worksheet you will find five texts that students will have to fill in with a corresponding form of the past simple tense. All the texts represent a dream that I usually assign my students ...
In this activity you will find a set of pictures with animals and cards that together constitute an exciting game ‘Find an Animal’. At first you assign an animal or bird to be found th ...
This informal letter presents a gap-fill exercise where the task is to complete spaces with the correct form of the simple past or present perfect. As a follow-up assignment students might be sugg ...
In this worksheet a busy teacher will find material to practice all future tense forms but future simple. In the first task students will have to make up their own instances for every case of usag ...
This handout presents extended information on ways to express future other than tenses. These expressions with future meaning such as ‘be about/likely/due/set/ bound to’ etc. are acco ...
This is a speaking activity that might be used as a warm-up where students will have to discuss how men, women, computers, cars, clothes and houses look like in future. At first everyone is given ...
A worksheet is designed to recycle all of the future tenses and ‘be going to’ – form. It consists of three tasks. In the first one the appropriate cases of usage should be found. ...
A powerpoint/boardgame about two verb tenses: present simple vs present continuous. Students are asked to play this boardgame by choosing the correct tense. They should be able to use these two te ...
A handout to use with intermediate levels (and up) to review pc and ppc :). The board game has the following activities: circle the correct answer; create one sentence with the Tense required; cre ...
There are plenty of ways to express future actions apart from tense forms. This worksheet comprises some of the most common structures that are used for this purpose. After examples students will ...
This worksheet is meant for revision classes at intermediate level. By correcting mistakes and explaining differences between various grammar forms students will learn more about simple and contin ...
This is a worksheet for revising the negative form of the verb to be at elementary level. There's a brief explanation followed by 4 different and easy exercises in which students are asked t ...
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