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 worksheet practices present continuous and pronouns. First, students learn the present continuous words for a variety of actions. They copy each word. Next, they make sentences and then rea ...
This worksheet combines the use of daily routine vocabulary and writing time. Students are asked to write in the correct time to answer questions such as "What time do you go to school?" "What t ...
This is a simple quick view chart for students to compare both tenses forms (statements, questions and negative sentences) and use. Also wh- questions. Pure grammar. I have used it for both Elemen ...
This worksheet was designed for the TED talk by Kirk Citron "And Now, The Real News." I created it for a group of Business English students, when we covered the topic of predictions. It includes t ...
I prepared this for an upper-int to advanced adult class. I adapted it from an article from the Guardian. It really got the students talking and debating. They were really interested. The best way ...
This is a fun activity designed for beginners. It explains in an easy way the simple past of regular verbs only in affirmative form. It deals with explanation of the rules of pronunciation of the ...
This powerpoint was originally made to complement an exercise in Side by Side 1, P110, with an aim of making the activity more fun for young children. However, the slide deck could be used as a st ...
This is a worksheet to introduce students to the basic grammar rules of Present Simple. It can be used in virtual classes to explain the sentence structure of positive, negative and interroga ...
Great for teenagers! This listening activity is quite simple. Students must listen and either cross out words they don't hear, fill in the blanks or correct sentences. There's no specific grammar ...
This PPT contains rules of usage of all the past tenses including examples for each situation. With the help of these sentenses you can elicit these rules from your students if they are upper-inte ...
This power point presentation has a lot of sentences to be completed based on pictures. The sentences must be finished in the past simple, continuous or perfect. Very good to practice imagina ...
Easy task for the revision of fruit and vegetables. The learners have to choose the name from the table and write it down under appropriate pictures. The next page is dedicated to the revision of ...
One student thinks of a celebrity and describes him or her using the vocabulary words from the table, the other student tries to guess who is being described. This worksheet can be used for the to ...
There are 2 sheets, the first is a multiple choice fill-in-the-blanks of the lyrics, the second sheet consists of comprehension questions, a grammar section (including the past simple, past contin ...
This review activity is intended to be used after stative (non-action verbs) like “need, want, believe, long, etc,” have been taught for a few days. This activity can be done two ...
Basic, easy to follow exercises for both present simple and progressive, good for review, intermediate. To be used after the topic has been explained and practiced, maybe before an approachin ...
This is a very cool video that shows some very brave people. The grammar objective here is to practice negatives.This is the World's Largest Rope Swing. In each of these situations, there is som ...
Everybody loves the Smurfs! Especially kids, but sometimes comic strips are beyond their level and difficult to read. This is a cool fun worksheet where students match dialogue bubbles with chara ...
This is to assist weak students to make simple sentences based on the pictures given. Simple verbs in present tense are given. And students will be familiar with the tenses and the pattern of the ...
This worksheet is intended for general revision of grammar: students read the sentences and decide if they are correct and if they aren't, they have to correct the mistakes. Then, they bid on the ...
Future exercises. Students have to complete the sentences using the verbs in brackets or write sentences using some given words. I hope these exercises will be useful for your ss. Students can wri ...
This is the third of three worksheets intended to practise the present simple. Every worksheet contains 16 pictures to prompt ss to ask questions about everyday routines using interrogative pronou ...
This is the second of three worksheets intended to practise the present simple. Every worksheet contains 16 pictures to promt ss to ask questions about everyday routines using interrogative pronou ...
This is the first of three worksheets intended to practise present simple. Every worksheet contains 16 pictures to prompt sls to ask questions about everyday routines using interrogative pronouns ...
Pairwork Speaking Activity - Major Historical Events. Cut out the cards to use for a pairwork activity – one person must say the date correctly and describe the event, the other must gu ...
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