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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A reading comprehension, followed by different activities. It can be used with children at an elementary level to review verbs in the simple past, to test reading comprehension, and to practice wr ...
I have just finished reading Jack and the Beanstalk with a group of children.They enjoyed the story and they love Angry birds. This is a worksheet to use with the Angry birds version of Jack and t ...
This is a simple to read and understand fact sheet about the basic structure of a Past-Continuous sentence/s. Indispensable in any TEFL/ESL classroom. Teachers may hand it out at the end of the ...
This worksheet can be used in many different ways. You can either copy it and play it as a memory game. (There are two same pictures). Students are put in groups of 4/3 and each takes 6 cards - th ...
This is a Powerpoint presentation that explains basic use, formation, keywords and short answers of Simple Present. It is a very useful tool to use in class, as it's far more interesting for young ...
This worksheet is for practising different vocabulary, eg. appearance, clothes, dwellings, seasons... can be used with all levels except begginers and elementary students. Students can use their i ...
In this worksheet you can find a short comparison between Past Simple and Past Continuous tenses: their uses, structures, examples, particles and some links to practise them on-line. If you like t ...
This is a short presentation about the present tenses comparing their uses, their structures (affirmative, negative and interrogative forms), some examples and the most common particles used with ...
hi :) I like this song and I think it is very useful to practice Present Simple and Present Continuous. The students are wanted to fill in the blanks in lyrics while listening to the song. You ca ...
A task with pictures and prompts for elementary students learning mixed future tenses. It might be given as a revision task in the beginning of the lesson. Each part has got an example, so the tea ...
This worksheet focuses on the present continuous. Students have to choose the verbs from a box and conjugate them in present continuous while they listen to Fools Garden song "Lemon Tree". The wor ...
Students can practice past simple and irregular and regular verbs. They are given a list of verbs in the Present Simple form and have to fill in the past simple of the verbs as well as write the G ...
This is a little PowerPoint presentation I made to explain the structure of Present Simple tense to my students. I use it when I introduce Present Simple for the first time, so that the students c ...
This worksheet is to help students understand the spelling rules for regular verbs -ed endings. There are two exercises for them to do after they have read and understood the rules in the box ...
This is a story about two burglars breaking into a house with gaps to fill in the correct tense. Verbs to be filled in are provided in brackets. Tenses in this worksheet: present simple/progressiv ...
This power point presentation aims to present the different forms of this tense (affirmative, negative and interrogative). It also provides somes rules about spelling and pronunciation. There are ...
I use this worksheet with my kids when we learn the Present Continuous tense. I use some funny pictures to revise verbs for actions, to make up statements in present continuous or negative sentenc ...
This worksheet is about the Past Simple of the Regular verbs. We can find an exercise where the students have to write the verb in the correct column according to the orthographical rules. Also th ...
A good song to practice Present Continuous. Except from the speed of the singer, this song provides lots of examples using present continuous and with activities like unscramble sentences and fill ...
This powerpoint presentation is about animals. It can be used for article in book Project 2, Tom Hutchinson, p. 28. It practises using present continuous tense, there is/ there are, vocabulary abo ...
This activity was created for engineering students at a Mexican university. They are all FCE level and most are in their last year of studies. Using a (fake) resume of a recent graduate was a wa ...
I looked up for simple exercises with 'was' and 'were' for my younger learners and I couldn't find any. So I did it myself. I hope your younger students will also enjoy matching the different noun ...
Analysing the shots and the character. Morning routine vocabulary, a progressive discovery of who Dexter really is. A series most of the students like. This activity is always appreciated and they ...
Grammar can be fun. Here you will find a selection of cartoons which illustrate various uses of different future forms (Will, going to, Present Continuous & Present Simple). It can be used as ...
Students work in groups and try to gather each person's biography. Then I suggest they write it fully changing some words, adding some linkwords to make the text more readable. Then we can ask pup ...
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