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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A worksheet that can be used both for practising the present simple - affirmative, negative and questions + adverbs of frequency and for communication - information gap. It can be done in pairs or ...
A comprehensive Passive Voice PowerPoint Presentation that has animation and a lot of various exercises on different tenses and forms. Tenses covered are the simple present, the present perfect, t ...
It's a worksheet based on a trailer of "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" movie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ceXQaPQD6k). You can work food vocabulary and Simple Present questions and short a ...
The text in the worksheet is about Chingle Hall, England, which has been known as the most haunted house in Britain. I found it in Headway Upper-Intermediate. There are excellent examples of narra ...
This is a worksheet for revising the past simple tense. There are simple explanations followed by a simple activity in which students are asked to complete 30 different sentences with the correct ...
A reading comprehension worksheet with vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation activities which target the use of present continuous and "going to" future for making holiday plans. It is suitable f ...
This is a reading comprehension paper for beginner and elementary levels. Students read then write about daily routines. The grammar focus is on simple present and adverbs of frequency with both f ...
A reading comprehension worksheet for ESL and EFL students suitable for pre-intermediate to intermediate levels, this test deals with travel experiences. The students are to answer some comprehens ...
Thanks for your worksheets. I will try to help with mine! My worksheet shows how the tense present perfect should be used in the English Grammar. It also has a good exercise to let the students pr ...
These simple and slightly monotonous exercises help beginner students to practice positive, negative and interrogative forms of construction "there is / are". However boring it might be, this type ...
This is a worksheet for revising daily activities related vocabulary. Students are asked to study the words / expressions given and then find then in the word search. The answer key is included.
A rather funny reading worksheet for both ESL and EFL students. It focuses on the use and form of the second conditional through a series of comprehension, grammar, and pronunciation activities. T ...
This reading comprehension worksheet may be suitable for ESL or EFL learners with pre-intermediate to intermediate levels. It focuses mainly on simple past, used to for past habits, and relative p ...
Cloze exercise to practice the use of the Past Continuous, Past Simple and Past Perfect. Students have to complete The Tale of the Three Brothers, a little tale embedded in the last Harry Potter b ...
The worksheet consists of 4 different exercises to practise the present simple tense. 1: affirmative form; 2. negative form; 3: interrogative form and short answers; 4: correct the mistakes in the ...
Here students should write two different ending of the story: happy and sad.It will help to develop critical thinking, because students will compose a story with different endings.They can share ...
The PowerPoint presentation focuses on the figures and events of American history depicted in the film "Forrest Gump". It helps EFL students to get the more profound understanding of the plot. The ...
Teacher reviews adverbs and their meanings. Then teacher asks students the questions in the middle column and guide students to answer them using the adverbs of the list (on the left and right). T ...
PRACTICE PRESENT SIMPLE AND PHRASAL VERBS . ENJOY IT! Everybody loves to listen to songs. Many of the songs we listen to are in English. When we listen to them and we don’t know English, we ...
This is a pretty easy worksheet for revising the simple past tense. Recommended for elementary students who are asked to fill in the blank spaces with the simple past of the verbs in brackets, wr ...
In this worksheet you will find 5 exercises: 1) previewing: sudents predict what is going to happen by writing a tick next to their choice; 2) a listening ex. in which students listen and tick the ...
Fair Game is a romantic novel written by Elisabeth Young. The following adaptation is taken from the first chapter. Students have to fill in the gaps with suitable tenses or verb forms. The worksh ...
Thanks to the attached handout, you will be albe to use 'have got' in practice. It includes structures (affirmative, negative and interrogative forms) so that you can learn it more quickly and eas ...
A moving article about saving a whale's life. The worksheet is appropriate for upper-intermediate to proficiency level students of English. There are gaps that have to be filled in with accurate v ...
Worksheet to practice the future implications of Present Progressive, it has a number of exercises to get students aware of the different ussages a verb tense has. It also includes a shot explana ...
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