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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Four activities about verbs to be, have got and there is/are. You can use them to revise these grammar points. The first activity is about the verb to be. The second activity is about the verb hav ...
This song will help you revise Present Perfect Continuous as well as other tense forms. The task is to fill in gaps with appropriate tense forms. As a pre-listening task students might be suggest ...
Simple past tense or past simple tense, either way is correct. This worksheet shows students and all learners of English how and when to use the past tense. It shows the five uses of this tense. I ...
The simple present tense explained in a short way for the beginner. This is easy to use and it works well with students of all ages. It talks about four uses in this tense, it does not go into it ...
This a review of the future simple. It has very easy exercises for example: complete sentences, choose the right option and fill in gaps in a song with the tense used, too. Besides, you ca ...
This worksheet can be used as an ice breaker at the begining of a course or also as a fun warmer for the class. Students will walk around asking questions to their classmates and looking for affir ...
This is a 2-page worksheet for revising the verb 'to be' at elementary level. There are 4 different activities in which students are asked to fill in the blanks with am, is or are, write full ...
This is a text about a day by the sea for children who can't go on holidays. There are some comprehension exercices with their key.Then you can teach simple past with regular and irregular verbs. ...
This is a powerpoint presentation which shows the student pictures of possible big events in their lives. The verbs are shown in infinitive form and the student should transform them into a presen ...
This worksheet can be used with the powerpoint presentation of the same name. It has multiple choice questions to check students understanding of when to use past simple and when to use present pe ...
This game will help learners feel the difference between future forms in terms of speculation. It is easy and fun, as the aim is to guess what kind of picture is “hidden” on a board. ...
This is a power point presentation based on "Who wants to be a Millionaire" TV show for teaching or revising the past simple. Recommended for elementary students but it can be easily adapted ...
This is an activity I prepared in order to practice the Simple Past with my students. I recommend a warm up with some vocab from the movie e.g. witch, wand, castle. Good for all ages and ...
This worksheet has exercises to help students learn how to use Present Perfect to talk about results of a past action. It is meant to accompany the Powerpoint slideshow of the same name, and provi ...
This powerpoint provides an overview of how to use Present Perfect to show a present result. This can often seem a difficult concept for students to visualize, and so pictures and explanations ar ...
This handout is based on the video by Norwegian duo Röyksopp “Remind Me” (not the song) and can be used within studying Chores/Daily Routines with elementary students. It is ...
This is a great gap-fill exercise to practice asking and answering questions in Past Simple for elementary students. This activity can involve up to 8 people with the aim to collect all the inform ...
This worksheet is designed for adults (only!) who study Daily Routines at elementary level. It represents a pair-work activity where students have to find the differences (there should be 4) by as ...
Very popular at the moment with the teens. My students were a bunch of girls and they loved it. You can pre-teach the past simple, review the regular and irregular verbs. After the listening exerc ...
This is my first contribution since this web site has helped me a lot! About the worksheet. It is about the present perfect continuous. You can start by asking your students what has been happenin ...
This is a simple activity that I've worked with my ESL students. The focus is - the Present Perfect Tense. (1- Fill the gaps. 2- Write the verbs in bold in the base form, simple past and ...
This activity is really simple. Your students can practice present continuous, present simple and learn new vocabulary ( if they are in a low level) or just practice. This song is not really diffi ...
Your students can revise the use of present simple and present continuous. They have to write correct sentences using some given words and they have to choose the correct option in another exercis ...
It is for beginners and it can be used as review also for the use of WH questions with verb 'to be' about different events, as well as the prepositions ' in, on, at'. First they must review the us ...
This is a second series of irregular verbs I've made into a card game (see earlier irregular verbs memory card game elsewhere on this site). The verbs in this series are totally different from the ...
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