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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In this activity, students watch and listen to Obama's victory speech in the 2012 election. In the first phase, while listening to Obama's speech, they have to complete the transcript with the mis ...
This worksheet helps students differentiate between the simple past and past continuous tenses in use and form. Students can differentiate between the use of 'when' that is followed by a short act ...
This is a good worksheet to tell the difference between the present simple and the present progressive (continuous) This worksheet contains fill in the gaps and a multiple choice section. This wor ...
This is a 2-page worksheet for teaching the future tense at intermediate level. The first page is basically just a grammar guide and the second page has a simple activity in which students are as ...
This is an easy worksheet for revising the present simple at elementary level. There are 3 activities in which students are asked to answer the questions, complete the sentences with have got or ...
In this activity students are first supposed to look for the past simple form of certain given verbs in the lyrics of Gloria Gaynor's song. Following this, students undersand that some of the verb ...
In this activity students are first supposed to look for the past simple form of certain given verbs in the lyrics of Adele's song. Following this, students undersand that some of the verbs they'v ...
The worksheet consists of 14 pictures and 14 small texts. The students have to choose verbs from the list to fill in the gaps with the correct form of the simple past or continuous. The key to the ...
The worksheet is aimed at practicing Present Perfect. Students watch a video item and choose activities the main character has done from the list of 20. Then students complete a writing task and p ...
It is part of a project named Positive Piece of News Project. Love, dedication, building confidence in loss, past tense and environmentally friendly activities. It is about getting involved. ...
This can be given as a game. A student is a cook, he needs to cook one of the dishes. There are some ingridients there. He gets a card of a dish and five cards of products. They are not suitable f ...
Thankful as I am for this great website, I'd like to share this simple worksheet for practicing Past Simple and Continuous. It is a popular song which I find adequate for teenagers between 13-16 y ...
Not just for listening to the song, one of my favourite songs, but also for speaking time, we can start by showing some photographs of people, one person in each photograph, and we can use that qu ...
As students have a problem about listening skill and they are sleepy after lunch time, I found that listening to music is a helpful activity to cope with those problems. Last Christmas is a cool s ...
This lesson plan is based on the task-based learning approach. The students are required to do the tasks individual, pair, and group. The language focus is the past simple tense under the routine ...
This is a series of classroom activities to enhance conversational skills in English while learning at the same time Present Perfect and Past Simple. The time estimated for each activity is includ ...
Practice regular verbs in past tense by classifying them according to their sound, order sentences and completing sentences. Also there is a section to write your own sentences using the correct t ...
Instructions: First show the NAME of the game, and then ask if they know(don't let they translate, try to make them explain, e.g: Hide and Seek is when you hide and other person has to find you) i ...
A short speaking or writing exercise that can be introduced as either a solo or partnered exercise. Students meet three characters - Laura, Chloe and Ricky, who always speak in an individual futu ...
This worksheet can be used to practice the Past Simple tense of some irregular verbs. You can use it during the practice stage of your lesson or give it as homework to your students. The worksheet ...
This worksheet is for intermediate or upper-intermediate where the students can know the vocabulary of the different types of doctors. The students will learn different vocabulary by means of read ...
In this worksheet you will find some practice of present perfect and simple past tense. Students have to fill in the gaps using present perfect or past simple tense. Some of my students have diffi ...
This can be used as a class activity or as a revision test. This worksheet includes - Verb To Be , Auxiliary (Do/Does), Numbers, Preposition of place, Possessive ('s), Professions, Present Simple, ...
A Revision exercise for Present continuous and the verb "to be" in two parts. Can be used for Speaking or Grammar revision. Students or teacher can ask questions to elicit negative form answers. ...
For low level learners working on calendar and/or holidays I hope this reading will provide a reasonable challenge. The main focus is reading comprehension using WH questions as well as Yes/No qu ...
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