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 worksheet contains a short article about Halloween and two exercises on reading comprehension. It is good for low elementary students, just present simple was used. Vocabulary is included on ...
Hey guys, this worksheet is designed to practice Simple Past Tense. It is a simple introduction of Vincent Van Gogh taken from the Internet. Students work in pairs and they have to ask each other ...
Song by Celine Dion "Because you loved me" with lots of simple past verbs (regular & irregular). There are several activities included: pre-listening tasks, while-listening tasks and post-list ...
The worksheet consists of two exercises to practise the use of the present and the past simple and continuous. The students have to fill in the gaps with the correct form of the verbs in brackets. ...
Slovak ppt about fairy tale about Chicken Licken and her friends. It can be used for practicising must. It includes crossword, wordsearch and talking about pictures. There are animated pictures. I ...
Present perfect with U2 - I still haven't found what I'm looking for... This is a good song worksheet to practice present perfect. First the students must listen to the song and after that they ca ...
This worksheet can be used for pair work. It will be a great tool for revising daily routine words. Your students will practice how to ask and answer questions in English using daily routine words ...
This is a brief analysis of Simple Past - Used to and Would when talking about past habits, actions and states. It illustrates the difference in meaning with simple examples so that students can u ...
This is a complete 6-page document to understand the electoral system in the USA. There is no proper activity, this is just important information about how it works. It is illustrated by some phot ...
This worksheet is meant for elementary teenagers working with the present simple, time and routine. It's got a true or false too. First they have to match the pictutes to the activities. Later the ...
This is a very interesting text about how some of the today's popular customs, proverbs and everyday expressions came into being. The worksheet starts with a speaking warm-up, followed by the main ...
This worksheet focuses on simple past and present progressive. It also provides a vocab activity. It's a good activity to consolidate present progressive and past simple tenses, affirmative, posit ...
It's a simple worksheet about the Simple Past. Good to use in your first classes teaching the SImpe Plast. It's got rules and exercises. There are regular and irregular verbs. Affirmative, Negativ ...
A worksheet with vocabulary that describes types of books. This also includes ed-ing adjectives and a short text about the author Roald Dahl with some questions. Finally students are asked to prod ...
This is a simple worksheet about present perfect. :) You can use it with children or teenagers. You can find exercises on some expressions of frequency: ever, never, often, sometimes, etc. ...
It's a reading and speaking activity.There's a text with some information about Kate Perry; right after there's a text comprehension activity. Ater the teacher has corrected it, he/she can go thro ...
This is a 2-page worksheet for revising the present simple tense at elementary level. There's a brief explanation followed by 5 simple activities in which students are asked to fill in the blank ...
I am convinced that at least one third of your students watched Baumgartner's freefall live. The information gathered that way will make it easier to understand the text. Above all, the students w ...
I have frequently used these exercises to warm my students up at the begining of a class. Do these simple past simple exercises with advanced beginner or low itermediate students. This can be us ...
This worksheet can be used at the moment of teaching the routines. Teacher can implement it and at the same time can make students interact while asking activities to their partners. They asociate ...
This worksheet is usually done after the introduction to the past simple and before the achievement test. The students do the exercises without any kind of help and then they correct the worksheet ...
Note expansion for students to write sentences to tell about the time for some events. Students are given cues to write sentences using present simple to describe an event. Students change the p ...
It's Halloween season. If your students are fed up with pumpkins and costume parties, maybe they will be interested in reading a spooky story. However, they will have to complete it by choosing th ...
Simple cards featuring a variety of famous people (most of them no longer with us) to be used when practicing years, birthdays plus introduction of the past simple of to be. I created them with my ...
This worksheet has The Simpsons family tree which is helpful to create sentences using possessive nouns. This worksheet is really easy to undestand and for sudents to practice simple present and v ...
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