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 is a 3-page worksheet for teaching or revising the present perfect tense at intermediate level. There's a brief explanation followed by 5 different activities in which students are asked to ...
After having given EFL students a list of commonly used irregular verbs and having asked them the first 30 or so, I give them this exercise, which also contains some passive voice sentences.
Handout of summarized notes on spelling and pronunciation. It is focused on 3rd person singular -s, -ing ending in present continuous, and -ed in past simple. It helps foreign learners to realize ...
Need to practice or revise the Future Perfect tense? Here's our new reference poster from the 'Grammar' series that contains short, but oh so useful activities that you'll love! Click the image t ...
Here's one more reference poster from our new 'Grammar' series, this time it's about the Past Perfect tense. You'll love these activities when the time comes to practice or review this tense with ...
Useful grammar worksheet to reinforce and consolidate the form and use of past simple (regular and irregular), and the form and use of comparative and superlative form of adjectives. It also helps ...
This is a very interesting handout because your students can practice simple past, past continuous and direct speech. They have to complete the bubbles of a comic. Also they have to make up a stor ...
This is a role-play game for intermediate and advanced students. They have to work in pairs, one student will be a famous person and the other one will be the interviewer. Students will practice t ...
Here's another reference poster from our new 'Grammar' series - this time it's about the Present Perfect tense. It'll definitely come in handy when you need to practice or review this tense with y ...
This ws could act as the 2nd part of my ws "What went wrong on holiday", but this time with "good things". There are 3 different activities to practise the simple past of both regular & irregu ...
This is a test I made for my 8-years-old student. It consists of four excercises: tick the correct name for the animal, guess the animal's name, choose the correct word for the question (who-what- ...
This is a very simple activity. Tell the students to imagine they went to a party the night before. Working in pairs, students should ask each other questions about the party, using to be in the p ...
This is a Power point presentation of the short story for kids "the very hungry catepillar." The whole presentation is colorful. It can be used to teach food, days of the week and numbers. The pre ...
Some grammar topics, for pre-intermediate and intermediate students, to help them reinforce some grammar points. It is a hand-out, it can be used as a review, it also has some examples. The topics ...
This is a very useful worksheet to practise the Simple Past irregular verbs at any level. Maybe the small drawings make it a little bit childish, but I guess they are nice and they help a lot to ...
This powerpoint presentation contains images from the television sitcom "the Office". After students are shown the images they have to say or write on their notebooks what the people in the pictur ...
It will help students to learn how to form present, past and future simple tenses. The formation is given in small tables and there are short examples on how to use them under each table. It will ...
What will you be doing tomorrow at 9am? You might as well be teaching a lesson on the Future Progressive! Here's the 6th poster from our 'Grammar' series. It'll come in handy when you need to prac ...
Target: young learners. Level: Beginners. Aim: to practice present simple negatives and use don't and doesn't correctly. There are 10 sentences written in Present Simple tense. All of them are pos ...
Payphone by Maroon 5, this is an activity of listening with different exercises to practice listening. There are exercises to complete the gaps while listening, use the verbs given in the past si ...
The aim of this set of study- and worksheets is to help (adult) students memorize very common irregular verbs according to given categories because of 1) the form of the infinitive vs. both the si ...
This is a worksheet for intermediate students on future continuous tense. There's a brief explanation followed by a simple activity in which students are asked to fill in the blank spaces with the ...
This is a multiple choice game for teaching or revising the past simple of the verb to be. Recommended for elementary students who are asked to choose the correct alternative to complete the sent ...
Worksheet with different excercises to practice simple present tense, simple past, present progressive (ing) and simple future. It could be a good activity to assess students at the beginning of t ...
Analysis worksheet that helps students develop social skills as well as reading and writing. It is a good activity to practice descriptions, comparing and contrasting and make connections. It coul ...
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