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 vocabulary gap-fill worksheet to help young learners retell a short animation film about Three Little Pigs and Santa. I hope your students will enjoy this activity as much as mine ...
Grammar spelling rules and pronunciation for past simple of regular verbs. Here you will find a complete class (PowerPoint) on past simple of regular verbs. Starting with spelling rules, going on ...
This worksheet is for ESL adult education classes for beginner students. It works well as a reference and as an introduction to these two verb tenses. It includes contractions that are u ...
This is a game based on Marck Hancock's maze available on his website. Students have to find the path through the verbs with the same pronunciation: e.g. cooks - visits - helps. It aims at helpin ...
This is a worksheet containing many exercises about actions in progress: matching exercises, reading and writing activities. The lesson requires a basic knowledge of action verbs, the verb "to be ...
Conversation lesson "all about me" inspires students to talk about themselves and practice WH words. This worksheet is suitable for a conversation class.
The worksheet focuses on the Passive and Active voice used to create past narrative. The tasks are based on the video that lists the historical events and major changes in Central Europe in 20th ...
Rihanna hit song from 2008, "Don't Stop the Music" is full of Present Continuous examples. The worksheet I prepared is a fill-in -the-blanks activity for beginners. Students are supposed to use t ...
Use this worksheet to practice a little bit with your students when to use simple past or present perfect. Video is available on youtube. There are some tasks to activate knowledge and at the e ...
Students have to fill in the gaps of a short story about a road trip with verbs in the past simple (affirmative or negative). As a follow-up, you can ask students to share travel experiences with ...
This is a holiday survey of 8 questions useful when you would like to engage all of the students in a group to report on their holidays. This is also a tool to ask and answer questions in Past Si ...
In this listening activity, students will hear 4 speakers describing where and with whom they usually hang out. After matching the activities to the speakers, students will review some collocatio ...
James Corden and Adele sing her songs and talk about her in his carpool. Very funny to watch and as most young people know who she is, this can be a great and fun exercise to practice listening s ...
This is an easy Present Simple board game including affirmative, negative, and question forms. Students are asked to get into teams, roll the dice and make sentences in order to practice the gra ...
Both the present simple and the continuous tenses are some of the most fundamental aspects of grammar. We use and hear these tenses every day, so it's important to understand the differences ...
This worksheet invites students to pronounce regular past tense endings appropriately. Likewise, students may write the past form of the verbs included with a different color ink to visualize pos ...
Review of the future tense in a PowerPoint presentation. This presentation may help you, the teacher, explain the future tenses or review them with your students. It contains explanations and exam ...
This lesson is FULL of visual aids and clear examples of when and how to use and form the Past Simple for irregular verbs. The lesson contains a link to a fun, animated video. This is the perfect ...
In this worksheet, students will work with the song 'Penny Lane' by The Beatles. There are many opportunities to work on different topics here: present simple, body parts, jobs, places in town. Th ...
In this worksheet, students will fill in the blanks of two conversations at a shop. After that, they will look into the language and vocabulary used in the conversations and analyze their meanings ...
It is a worksheet for children that I made in order to practice the verb "to have" using affirmative sentences, negation and questions. It is suitable for beginners and elementary level. I used it ...
I created this worksheet to help students revise a variety of verb tenses and practice forming questions and answers. I used it in secondary schools as well as in adult conversation classes and it ...
This is a quick and easy exercise of adverbs of frequency. It has both the verb be and regular verbs, so the teacher should have already explained the difference in adverb placement. The student ...
Exercises on Past Perfect Simple I. Write the verbs in Past Perfect Simple. II. Write the verbs in Past Perfect Simple. Use the negative form. III. Complete the questions in Past Perfect Simple. ...
Practise questions and negatives in the Present Simple and the Present Continuous. Enjoy learning/teaching English with this exercise. Students have to choose between using the Present Simple or ...
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