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 English worksheet is titled 'Has, had or have?' It was made for pupils of 8 - 10 years old. Ss must read through the sentences and decide whether the word should be has, had or have. For exam ...
Song worksheet for simple past tense. One of the most famous songs from Elton John. It's a filling in the blank worksheet using simple past verbs. When teaching simple past our students need ...
I used this worksheet with 6th grade students to practise present continuous and activate some vocabulary items. Students have to listen to the song and fill in the gaps with the correct form of t ...
This is a worksheet I use for beginners to review the present simple, verbs related to everyday activities, and time. Each student asks three others about their daily activities, and then makes se ...
Present continuous chart and examples which help children understand faster the usage and form of the present continuous. It helps children understand the word order of affirmative and negative s ...
This is a very nice activity to be done in pairs and it takes around 20 minutes. One student gets the "A" and the other one gets the "B" part. They ask each other the questions using the Simple Pa ...
This handout concerns everyday activities and reading the time. It is prepared for the primary school. The learners have to fill the gaps with structures: I wake up, I go to schoo, I do the shoppi ...
I used this worksheet with students who have shown a weakness in understanding the two tenses and were really confused when confronting them in activities. It proved to be very useful. It contain ...
An activity for forming present tense questions and sentences in the 3rd person. First tell the students to guess which things you do every day. If they think you DO this, they must colour the sta ...
This text contains vocabulary connected with the history of surfing. It`s good for a team work where two teams in turns try to guess the exact word for each gap from the sentence context. If ...
I used the song I Knew You Were Trouble to help my students with some irregular verbs in the Past Simple Tense. In this worksheet, students first complete the Past Simple Tense of the verbs in b ...
This is a picture dictionary which can also be used as a classroom poster for revising action verbs at elementary level. The picture dictionary is available in both colour and black and white version.
Talking about Sunday plans from lecturer : A. Maitree Jeremy. Look at the table and talk about the activities each student is going to do next Sunday. Example : Question : What is Amanda ...
Worksheet about daily routines / telling time / present simple.This is a simple worksheet for beginners or intermediate students. Students just have to answer questions about themselves or a ...
"Classy girls", a fairly easy to understand song by the Lumineers for teaching verbs in the past tense to elementary students. A gap filling exercise to use regular and irregular verbs. It can be ...
This is a pair worksheet where students can revise the Simple Present tense by asking and answering several qestions in order to complete someone's routine. (Just in case) Please note that where t ...
The worksheet is dedicated to the song called "One way or another" (Blondie / One Direction), extremely popular nowadays and adored by many young learners. Apart from the gap filling exercise (lis ...
This is a board game I design for my ESL adult beginners class. It deals with the third person affirmative, negative and questions with do and also with jobs. These are the answers (in case you ne ...
This worksheet is aimed at working with elementary students. It deals with vocabulary related to habitual actions, preferences, regular, irregular verbs, connectors. It also practices readin ...
This is a worksheet for revising the past simple tense through reading at elementary level. Students are asked to read the text, mark the sentences as true or false and answer the questions given.
Hi all the enthusiastic teachers. I am here again with a miming game. There are 23 simple sentences written. You can cut them and give the students who volunteer to mime :) The question is " ...
hi :) I like this song and I think it is very useful to practice Present Simple and Present Continuous. The students are asked to fill in the blanks in lyrics while listening to the song. You can ...
Print this worksheet for class homework. Was and were past simple exercises.This exercise focuses on using correct singular and plural forms of the verb to be in the past.
It is a simple comprehension reading using simple present and descriptive vocabulary, this exercise is a good suggestion for beginners. It is a beautiful description about a man that lives by the ...
Analysis of structure - concept questions to elicit present perfect continious - I have been wanting to meet you for a long time - I have, (I've) she has.(she's) he has, (he's), they have (they'v ...
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