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 simple worksheet for revising the present simple (interrogative form). Recommended for elementary students who are asked to look at the affirmative sentences and put them in the negativ ...
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This worksheet is about practicing the structure "Going to" for elementary students. It consists of two kind of exercises; the first one is about a picture where the students have to write a sente ...
This is a great activity to do with Elementary/Pre-intermediate students, but can also be adapted for higher levels. Watch The Wrong Trousers with your students and pause the film in four places, ...
This worksheet includes a story with gaps. The students first fill in the gaps, then read the passage again, and lastly they answer the questions about it. There are true/false questions unde ...
This worksheet contains some action verbs and pictures. Students are required to label the picture with the appropriate verb and say whether the verb is regular or irregular. Teachers can use this ...
This worksheet contains a gap fill exercise with forms of the verb 'to be' in the present tense. It requires very basic knowledge (affirmative forms only) and is adequate for younger learners (ele ...
Grammar study sheets affirmative/negative and interrogative explanations with exercise. In color and black&white version. these sheet could be used in class or for homework as it contains expl ...
This collection of photographs helps students to produce statements using present continuous. One of my favourite activities is to show the photograph just to one student and make the rest of the ...
This activity can be used as a follow-up one, once Present Continuous has been presented. The aim is for students to see the structure minimally contextualized and for them to actually be confront ...
This is a very simple worksheet for revising the present simple tense. There are four different and easy activities in which students are asked to complete the sentences with the correct form of ...
This is a three-page worksheet on the Present Continuous. It includes an introduction of the new tense, the rules and exceptions and several exercises, with visual support. I used it in a second y ...
This is Present simple grammar worksheet, that helps you to find out the gaps in your student´s knowledge. The task is to correct the mistakes in interrogative, negative and declarative sen ...
This worksheet consists of 4 exercises to revise the present simple.
1) put the verbs in brackets in the correct form.
2) put the pictures in the correct order according to the story and write t ...
This is a worksheet for revising the past continuous tense. There are simple explanations followed by a simple activity in which students are asked to complete 20 different sentences with the cor ...
The worksheet contains the lyrics of the song" Here I am by Bryan Adams. These lyrics are used to teach tenses, contractions and auditory and visual perception skills. The song can be used during ...
This is a song that is great to teach about behaviour when it comes to culture and it is great to teach simple past actions. Teenagers and young adults may find it very interested and identify wit ...
IRREGULAR VERBS: A REFERENCE LIST
Mnemonic Rhyming Groups By: Hani Al Tahrawi Learning can be fun with Mnemonics! When we were kids, rhyming songs and phrases were some of the gimmicks u ...
You can use this worksheet to explain the verb To Be in singular, complete sentences and give personal information with am and is. This worksheet some information about how affirmative and negativ ...
If you want your pupils to read a text about a birthday party and answer its comprehention questions, If you want to test them on vocabulary related to body parts, health and ailments, school rule ...
The aim of this game is to memorize 42 irregular verbs in an entertaining way. The winner is the player who can make as many families as possible. Can be played by groups from 2 to 8 players. Befo ...
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