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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An excellent example of Narrative tenses exercise for upper-intermediate and advanced students of English. I took it from Headway Upper-Intermediate. The text contains past simple and continuous, ...
Complete worksheet for such a "squeezable" song! In it you will find: past simple exercises, find a word that mean..., look up words in a dictionary and summarize the story. You can model it to su ...
Listening activities for "Do you remember" by Jack Johnson. Two ex.: a) fill in the blanks and b) answer T or F. There´s no target tense, students complete with the given words. However you ...
This is a simple listening worksheet for the song "Ideserve it" by Madonna. You will find two exercises: a) fill in the blanks and b) Answer T or F. The tense I wanted students to work on was the ...
This song is good to use if you are teaching the Present Continuous Tense. You can ask your students to put the sentences in order, fill in the blanks just listening, choose the correct one. In th ...
Let’s Talk 1 Practises verb tenses: Present Continuous, Past Simple, Future Simple This worksheet can be used for conversation practise and preparation for oral exams. My adult students fi ...
This is a worksheet for revising verb tenses: present simple and present continuous. There´s a brief explanation followed by an activity in which students are asked to complete 25 different ...
Wonderful Tonight is a very simple song to revise present simple. Besides, students can learn new vocabulary. The first activity is related to vocabulary (students may not know some of the words i ...
It's a great song for revising comparative adjectives and past simple. Hope you enjoy it! It can be used for elementary and pre-intermediate students. First, students work without listening to th ...
Each student gets a copy. Fold the paper down the middle and select student 1 and student 2. Student one starts by selecting A or B, then student 2 reacts with the appropriate response. They al ...
This is a song that many people know because it was performed by Glee. This song is great to work on vocabulary and a little bit of present Progressive. Also, it is really good for students to ana ...
A nice worksheet based on this funny scene from The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon proposes a friendship algorithm to make new friends. You may use it to discuss friendship related topics. It also has a ...
Good to work present continuous and a have a little fun, from Iturrama (basque country - jj.b) The story of the song is nice too, you can translate it orally with the students.
This is a worksheet children will love to do since it has pictures about school objects, which will help them remember the vocabulary more easily, and a picture of Bart Simpson which has all his i ...
This worksheet is aimed to Spanish-speaking learners who are learning English as a foreign language. It deals with listening and reading comprehension, vocabulary, the simple past tense and report ...
Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega: students love this song! It is easy to sing, easy to understand the lyrics, and has a nice, sentimental but 'daily life' story to it. You can follow up with present ...
An easy text about Nessie, the mysterious Loch Ness monster. Is she real? Check it out with your students and encourage them to know more about another English-speaking countries' legends. The act ...
This is a worksheet I prepared to my teens students who were studying simple present and daily routines, adverbs of frequency and free time activities. Nice one to practice grammar, they have to w ...
This is a table with three columns: day, activity and your sentence. It's intended for the practice of the future continuous or present progressive tense with the meaning of future arrangements. T ...
This is a worksheet for revising the present simple tense. Recommended for elementary students who are asked to fill in the blanks with the affirmative, negative or interrogative form of the verb ...
This is a worksheet for revising the present continuous tense. There is a brief explanation followed by an activity in which students are asked to complete 30 different sentences with the correct ...
This activity contains a board game for beginner students to learn and practice, in a funny way, the short form of the verb to be. It can also be used to practice personal pronouns. It can take ar ...
It is a board game where your students can practice how to use verb to be in present simple. It is fun and useful. Students can play in groups or pairs. Roll the dice, start from the start point a ...
This is a set of cards to practice the clarify and practice the use of JUST and ALREADY with the Present Perfect. The cards include a short conversation each with gaps for students to decide where ...
This is a set of cards with gapped sentences for students to complete with BEEN or GONE. It is meant to be used for practice once the difference has been explained. They can be used in a Noughts & ...
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