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 presentation is used basically for practising present perfect plus for /since. First, I project just the photographs without the information. I ask them when these inventions appeared. ...
Students ask classmates what they did at the weekend. Then they have to form sentences about what they have found out using Past Simple. The worksheet contains forming questions, having dial ...
This worksheet is meant to practice listening through focus on rhyming words. It is interesting to analyze the meanings of Skyfall in the movie. With upper levels , you could previously watch a sc ...
The worksheet contains sentences with infinitives in brackets. Students must read the sentence and decide whether they should use present perfect or past simple tense in those contexts. Some sente ...
It's a multiple-choice test in 10 variants to check your students' knowledge of different verb tenses. It enables the teacher to avoid cheating during the test. The test gives students the opportu ...
A bad case of the sneezes, by Bruce Lansky.Funny 'school excuses' poem, and gap fill exercise created to practise the past simple tense. Can also be used as a reading exercise, a warmer or filler ...
It is a kind of game that encourages ss to speak in given time. The teacher is supposed to explain the names of cards ( spades- hearts- clubs-diamonds) first, give the question as a hand o ...
This powerpoint introduces the classification of animals in the first grades of primary school. It deals with animals, body parts and simple present tense. You may have students predict what ...
This worksheet comprises four different types of stories referring to the topic Travelling. There are different phrases in each story and students have to use all the phrases in order to make a f ...
This worksheet contains a small text about Canada and it is directed for Brazilian students of the English language. There is also some questions for conversations and eight spots to put the new w ...
Present perfect practice! Students have to complete the gaps with the verbs. It's a nice sheet to have after explaining the subject and also to send as homework. It's a simple worksheet, however i ...
This is a very nice new song from the group Green Day. With this you can practice listening with some exercises such as gap filling, order the stanza, etc; and a writing based on simple pres ...
Students describe actions they had completed before a specific time in the past. Objective of the WS is to provide controlled practice for using the past perfect tense in a personal and meaningful ...
This is a speaking activity propmted by cards suggested for groups of three students. One student from the group draws a card from the pile and asks the question or proposes the topic for discussi ...
This is a simple reading worksheet about was/were. I teach Brazilian students, so this was done using Brazilian DEAD celebrities, but you can change to international DEAD celebs, too. It has been ...
I took this text from Happy Earth 1 classbook. In the first activity students have to provide the past forms of the verbs listed next to the text. In the 2nd one, they have to classify the verbs. ...
SS will have to read the different situations and check the corresponding box. This may be helpful for pre-intermediate, intermediate students. Hope you'll find it useful. :) My SS really enjoye ...
In this worksheet students have to listen and complete the gaps. After that, they can discuss some aspects of the meaning of the song and also see when the present pefect and present perfect conti ...
There are two versions of this set of worksheets in this file. The first is for adults because it includes reproductive organs. The worksheet toward the end is for children/adolescents or more con ...
This simple quiz contains some funny facts that your students need to correct by using Present Simple Tense (negative form). Can be used for 9-12 y.o. children. Microsoft Office Power Point Pres ...
This is a 3-page document where you will find some flash cards related to daily routines ready to be printed out. It is supposed to help your ESL students practice the present simple tense by reco ...
This is a reading worksheet for teaching daily routines, the present simple and question words. Recommended for elementary students who are asked to read the text and then answer the questions given.
This is a reading worksheet about groundhogs. This may be used in a Groundhog Day Lesson as an introduction or if the students do not know what a groundhog is. The worksheet includes vocabulary ...
Hello again, it has been long. I have missed submitting worksheets :D Anyway, this worksheet will help you to practice Past Simple forms by reading, listening. There are 3 parts. First the student ...
Present Perfect worksheet using the song "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" by U2 Procedure: Fill in spaces with the verbs in brackets using present perfect or simple past tenses. This ...
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