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 very low level script based exercise. Every student gets a copy. The teacher folds the paper in half along the y axis. Then hands one to student 1 and one to student 2. Student 1 read ...
The worksheet is intended to consolidate students' knowledge of English grammatical tenses and verb forms (i. e. infinitives and gerunds). Students have to put each verb in brackets into an approp ...
A simple worksheet containing basic information on how to form the present participle correctly. The teacher can use it when explaining the continuous tenses (e.g. The Present Continuous). It is a ...
This is suitable for children who have just learned the present perfect. There is a task where sentences with the present perfect have to be written for given pictures and a mix and mingle activi ...
This worksheet is focused on practising present simple and daily routines. First, the children are supposed to write the activity according to the picture and complete the question. Then they ans ...
This is a worksheet of the song "Someone Like You" by Adele. I used this worksheet with my intermediate students to revise past simple and past perfect and to work with definitions and synonyms. Y ...
This is a fun practice worksheet for the whole episode.I get my students to match the words first with their meanings in the first activity before watching the episode. After there are a matching ...
This is a worksheet contrasting the past perfect and the past perfect continuous tense. There are 4 pages with different activities in which students are asked to fill in the blank spaces with th ...
Present Simple worksheet. Demonstrative adjectives indicate exactly which noun the speaker means and where it is (or they are) relative to the position of the speaker. If the noun in question is n ...
This is a present continuous gap filling worksheet. This worksheet focuses only on the affirmative sentences. Before doing this worksheet I suggest you teach the vocabulary, so that students are a ...
Famous people sheet to motivate students to describe who the people are using He/She in simple present. Who are they, where do they live, what do they do, why are they famous, etc Perfect for basi ...
This is a song by Queen to practise vocabulary and verbs. "We are the champions" is an amazing song to enjoy in class. You can practise vocabulary and verbs tenses in the past simple and present p ...
This is game to be played like Memory, but you need to match the base form and past participle form instead of a picture, or word. I also laminate all my cards. This vocabulary is for what I cal ...
This is the 2nd ppt with 21 animated slides on the present continuous with some grammar to learn/revise the interrogative form and short answers. Then there are different activities to revise the ...
This ppt consists of 21 animated slides with some grammar and mostly practice of the present continuous. In this 1st part the students learn and practise affirmative and negative sentences in an e ...
This is a good way to make your students speak....individually, to each other. I sometimes join to the whole fun ))))))))
You can do it as a number game asking students to call out numbers and gi ...
Students write about actions, complete sentences with the appropiate simple present tense. They also write the simple past tense of verbs. Besides, thy lool at some pictures and write what those p ...
The famous song of Frank Sinatra with a word list (vocabulary) and 2 activities:
1. students have to open the brackets to put the verbs into present perfect.
2. the students have to put verbs fr ...
This is a pretty easy worksheet for elementary students on past simple tense. Students are asked to fill in the blanks with the past simple of the verbs in brackets, write negative sentences, ask ...
This is a great worksheet for elementary or pre intermediate learners. Learners can identify and discuss what they like and what they don't like. This can be used to teach present simple lessons. ...
Hi!! I used this before starting with the book to check how much the students remembered. It can also be used as revision before a test. It includes matching exercises, choosing the correct option ...
There are four different reading texts which include some basic grammar patterns such as can-cant, have got-has got, likes and dislikes. Matching activity and general questions should be done acco ...
The difference between (be going to) and (will). This sheet helps your students to tell the difference between both. When we use each one of them and how we use it too. It contains the description ...
You can use this handout to teach some daily activities and the use of simple present tense. First have a short question and answer activity such as "what do you do at 5?", after that ask th ...
I found this worksheet once on a language learning portal. It is a great role-play for practising the past continuous in a communicative, fun way. Make sure you first teach the past continuou ...
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