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 great dialogue worksheet for learners who have difficulty learning some grammar topics such as past simple, past continuous and past perfect. This worksheet is not suitable for young lea ...
Watch a video lesson to help students learn about the past perfect tense, and then complete the worksheet to help them continue to practice using the past perfect tense. This actvity can be used i ...
These role play cards are designed for elementary to pre-intermediate learners. There are 6 different scenarios split between the police, ambulance and fire service. Students work in pairs to prep ...
This is a lesson produced to work with high school students to develop past tenses and the ability of telling and writing stories. The activities are contextualized through the genre Urban Legends ...
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This is a simple crossword designed for elementary / pre-intermediate / intermediate students. It has been designed to help students learn the differences between past simple and present perfect, ...
This is a mingle activity for a group of up to 15 students (last 3 cards can be taken out without any change in the activity). Students' cards include personal information such as name, nationaity ...
This activity serves as a = fun way for your students to practice "be going to." It works best when played in groups of four.
To play the game, cut out the cards on the second page and place the ...
This is a presentation about Present Simple where we discuss some basic aspects of this topic, such as the different modalities of the tense, or the use of adverbs of frequency. It contains a lot ...
This activity requires students to identify the correct spelling of the verbs for the Present Simple for 3rd person singular (he/she/it) and match the verb to its respective spelling rule. Some in ...
After listening to the song "Castle on the Hill," students must complete activities related to the song. Activities include filling in the blanks with the correct words and verb tenses, as well as ...
This is a list of several questions designed to help teach verb tenses. The questions are divided into Simple Present, Simple Past, and Simple Future. This worksheet also contains a bunch of Mixed ...
It's a game to practice the simple present using daily activities as vocabulary. My students liked it so much. It's very simple to play. The teacher chooses one student that will begin. Afterwards ...
This is a simple and easy reading comprehension worksheet on the topic family, physical description and the present simple tense. The worksheet is available in both colour and black and white ...
This document is a summary sheet of English tenses, the basic sentence structure and subject pronouns. I use this as an introduction to basic grammar knowledge for complete beginners. The main foc ...
This is a little poem I came up with as a metaphor for the narrative tenses. You can use it as a poster or a fun handout for higher level groups. You can ask them why each metaphor is used and do ...
A worksheet to practice the present simple and sentence structure. In the video there is a short explanation of word order in English plus an activity similar to the one in the worksheet with 10 ...
This boardgame is designed for students to practice using present continuous. All you will need is a dice and some counters. Students take turns rolling the dice and moving along the board accordi ...
I created this PDF to help my students understand the verb 'to be' more easily. The verb 'to be' gets used so much in the English language but students often have difficulty knowing when to use it ...
This is a handout accompanied by a YouTube video to introduce present simple to learners. The worksheet contains 10 of the most general uses for present simple, while the video also has an intera ...
This is a worksheet to revise the narrative tenses, namely the past simple, past continuous and past perfect. It allows students to practice their listening, reading, pronunciation, vocabulary and ...
This is a simple worksheet about passive voice (using simple past). It has a brief description about the passive voice and its structure in the simple past and items. Item 1: write the sentences u ...
This is an infographic I made for a short video on how to describe pictures in English. It talks about the vocabulary and grammar for a great picture description. I think any level could use it es ...
This worksheet has been created in order to facilitate elementary young learners practice the question and short negation of the verb 'like' in the present simple tense. Illustrations can be helpf ...
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