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 cards can be used to review vocabulary of daily routine, frequency adverbs, free time activities, likes /dislikes using the simple present. Put the cards in a box/bag and ask students to choo ...
In this worksheet, students should use two tenses (past simple and past continuous) by filling in blank spaces. Rules about when each tense is used must be learned before trying to solve the works ...
"The Black Hole" is a clever Sci-fi short film about finding possible/impossible technology in an office and about the moral implications of the character's actions. This worksheet asks students t ...
This board game is an easy fun way to practice sentence formation using the Present Continuous. Get into two teams, take turns to roll the dice and make affirmative or negative sentences. The firs ...
Reading about the importance of water. The truth is that we are lucky enough to have clean water whenever we want, but this is not the case for many people around the world. Did you know that arou ...
This is an easy, fun way to practice answering Yes/No and Wh- questions using the verb "to be" in the simple past tense. It helps young learners get involved in the speaking process and talk about ...
Help your learners practice their English with this fun video activity. Watch the TV show clip and then read the description sentence, which is written in the active voice. Change the sentence int ...
Watch the YouTube video. Look at the pictures and the sentences written on them. Choose the correct grammar to complete the sentences. Use present simple or present continuous/progressiv ...
The worksheet consists of a table where students should ask one another questions about the weather in a corresponding country. Great for developing speaking skills and teaching weather-related vo ...
All my teenagers students love Katy Perry. This an old song by Katy Perry but it is really useful to catch the correct pronunciation of-ed in regular past simple verbs. They first fill in the gaps ...
The tasks are based on the video and focus on developing listening comprehension. The worksheet includes listening for the gist, listening for specific information, and gap-filling activities. Th ...
Practice your English with this fun video activity. Watch the video on the link below and complete the gap-fill activity. It can be done as a speaking task or writing task. Change the simple prese ...
Board game with travel related vocabulary, including questions using present simple, past simple, and present perfect. This can be used with multi-cultural students or students who are familiar wi ...
This is a song worksheet to learn vocabulary and develop listening and speaking skills. After listening to the song twice, students fill in the gaps in the lyrics. As it is a song with catchy ryth ...
Monopoly Deal is basically Monopoly, the game you know and hate, in the form of a card game, which you will come to love. It is Monopoly without tears, and it takes about a tenth of the time (20-6 ...
PowerPoint explaining PRESENT SIMPLE. Includes contractions, conjugations and formation for questions. I used it for preteens, teens and young adults; They all seemed to like it a lot! Well anima ...
With this worksheet students will answer some exercises in the affirmative, negative and interrogative forms of the verb to be in the simple present. It can be used to practice and to review the v ...
Lesson 4 of this 24 part series in intermediate English as a second language designed exclusively for native Spanish speakers. Simple present phrases help students identify this tense. Also incl ...
This worksheet is based on 'Peppa Pig' cartoon Halloween themed episode. It starts from the beginning of the video below and ends at 4:29. It was made to revise Future Simple and Going To and to s ...
Worksheet to work on listening skills with an elementary or (pre)intermediate levels. It can be used to revise irregular past simple verbs. Don't forget to have a look at the video: You can also ...
This fun activity will help students practice some grammar elements such as past tenses, pronouns and the future with 'will'. Ideal for elementary or pre-intermediate students. The song can be par ...
There is a short info section on the rules for Passive Voice, form and use for two tenses: Present Simple and Past Simple. There are two exercises to practise the Present Simple & the Past Sim ...
This song worksheet intends to mainly test students' listening abilities, but it also has some argumentative writing concerning the song's theme and vocabulary understanting (students have to expl ...
An awesome collaborative or individual exercise to practice writing, speaking, sequencing, storytelling, follow up questions and much more! Use the images as prompts to tell a story. Brainstorm vo ...
It is a lesson plan for teachers to use in the classroom. It is a 20 minutes lesson focusing on speaking and grammar and teaching students the difference between past & present tense. This les ...
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