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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The 2nd ppt on the past simple consists of 28 slides to revise/learn the past simple of regular & irregular verbs in the negative and interrogative form (including short answers). Then the stu ...
The 1st ppt consists of 21 slides to teach/revise the past simple of regular and irregular verbs with some grammar (how to form it, spelling, examples) and lots of practice to help students when u ...
PowerPoint presentation to practice positive, negative and interrogative forms of the verbs in the Past Simple Tense. Students are given positive sentences in the Present Simple Tense which should ...
This PowerPoint presentation contains a funny poem which helps students remember names of the days of the week. The key words are hidden and appear when clicked. It may be used for practicing both ...
This PowerPoint presentation contains several short poems based on special questions. They are easy to remember and focus on different question words. Some of them may be familiar to you while the ...
This worksheet contains different types of exercises to help students with general and special questions in Present Simple Tense. Exercises are graded by difficulty level starting from the easiest ...
This animated Power Point presentation may prove a good grammar and vocabulary drilling for starters. It focuses on the Present Simple forms of the verbs ‘to be’, ‘can’ and ...
Song the way it was by The Killers.This worksheet has some activities: fill in the gaps that we can work on past tense of the verbs, match words and pictures (work on vocabulary) and answer questi ...
This is a song by the Swedish group Roxette, and teachers can use it to work with the verb to be and subject pronouns. I usually use this song after the grammar explanation or as a tes ...
Activity focused on Intermediate, Upper Intermediate or Advanced students. There's a different task for each part of the song: completing the sentences with the appropriate verb and verb tense; ar ...
It's a song for elementary students. You can review present continuos tense. It's a tropical song useful to work with adults. Pronunciation is very clear and the rythm is nice. It has four differe ...
This is a basic test on face's parts and two more excercises on verb to be. Can be use as a warm up. Kids could used the face image to write the part indicated by the arrow and name as for example ...
A student asked me to explain if "I'm loving it" was grammatically correct! I found this great blog post (http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/im-loving-it-grammar.aspx) and used it as a basis for ...
This simple worksheet helps students be more aware of the pronunciation of "ed" endings when using the past simple tense. Students classify verbs according to the pronunciation endings. Can be do ...
In this worksheet you'll find a U2 song. Basically that's an oral speech lesson. First discuss music, comparing rock to pop, later listen to the song - fill in the gaps, and later you ...
This is a speaking worksheet. It was created to practise Present Simple form of the verb "like". The senteces are created in positive and negative forms. It is very easy. It can be used to practis ...
The following is a speaking activity to be done in pairs in order to study or review Simple Present Tense and more specifically the grammar rules for the third person singular. Each one of the stu ...
Practise daily activities and household chores through the song "When will my life begin?" by Mandy Moore. You'll find the video from the movie Tangled on youtube. Students may enjoy this song by ...
These are the before and after watching the clip from the movie Tangled. You can review activities through a simple TPR game such as Simon says. Then, students work labeling pictures, watch the mo ...
It's a powerpoint presentation that can be used to introduce present continuous to teenagers. This presentations shows activities that celebrities are doing at the moment of speaking. It can be us ...
Worksheet to practice verb to be, countries and nationalities. Speaking and writing practice. After having introduced countries and nationalities, students will work in groups, they will ask every ...
I've used this worksheet to revise tenses in year 3, especially before a test and my students found it very helpful. The worksheet contains multiple choice exercises and fill in exercises for vari ...
This text is a comprehension text of present simple and past simple. There are spelling and grammar mistakes and students have to find and correct the sentenses. I have done it for my students who ...
-ing forms of some verbs analyzing the song "Going Under" by Evanescence. The song might be a little heavy for some audiences but is good enough for teenagers and people who like rock. I used it t ...
The animation "The Old Man and The Sea" is based upon the story by Ernest Hemingway. It tells us a magnificent and thrilling story about the trial of Santiago and a big fish. It contains much to c ...
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