Past Tenses ESL Games, Activities and Worksheets

ESL Past Tenses Activity - Grammar and Speaking: Forming, Asking and Answering Questions from Prompts, Controlled and Freer Practice - Group and Pair Work In this engaging past tense speaking activity, students form, ask and answer conversation questions in the past simple, past continuous, past perfect simple and past perfect continuous tense. In two groups, students complete conversation questions with verbs in brackets in the correct past tense. Next, students pair up with someone from the other group and take turns asking and answering the past tense conversation questions with their partner. Afterwards, students share what they found out about their partner with the class. show less

ESL Past Tenses Worksheet - Grammar Exercises: Matching, Gap-fill, Binary Choice In this useful past tenses worksheet, students revise the past simple, past continuous, past perfect and past perfect continuous tense. First, students match words in bold in sentences with the correct past tense. Next, students write the name of the past tense that completes each description. Students then circle the past tense verb forms that best complete each sentence. After that, students complete sentences with verbs in brackets in the correct past tense. Students then complete sentences using verbs from a box in their correct past tense form. Lastly, students match sentence halves together and use a verb from a box in its past tense form to complete each sentence. show less

ESL Past Tenses Activity - Grammar and Speaking: Matching, Sentence Completion - Pair Work In this free past tenses activity, pairs race against each other to complete their partner's sentences with appropriate endings, putting verbs in the sentences in the correct past tense form. Student A starts by reading their sentence beginnings to Student B who listens and matches each one with a sentence ending. The student then completes the sentence by putting the verb in brackets in the correct past tense and reading the ending back to their partner. If Student A agrees the ending is correct, the student writes it down next to the beginning. Afterwards, the two students swap roles. The first pair to complete their sentences correctly is the winner. show less

ESL Past Tenses Game - Grammar and Speaking: Forming Sentences from Prompts - Pair Work In this fun past tenses game, students play battleships using the affirmative and negative forms of the past simple, past continuous, past perfect and past perfect continuous. To start, students mark four ships on their grid. Students then play a game of battleships using different past tense affirmative and negative forms. The aim of the game is to be the first student to find and destroy all their partner's ships. Students take turns choosing a square on their partner's grid. However, instead of giving a grid reference to find a ship, the student makes a past tense sentence or question according to the item and past tense form shown on each axis. The other student listens to the past tense sentence or question, looks at their grid and says whether it is a hit or miss. The first student to sink all their partner's ships wins the game. show less

ESL Past Tenses Game - Grammar and Speaking: Forming Sentences from Prompts - Group Work In this challenging past tenses game, students listen to information and race to make sentences using the past simple with either the past perfect or past continuous. In groups, students take turns picking up a card and reading out the 'story', 'connector' and 'background' parts on the card to the other students. The other group members listen and use the information to make a sentence using the past simple with either the past perfect or past continuous. The first group member to say the correct answer as shown on the card wins and keeps the card. The student with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner. show less

ESL Past Tenses Game - Grammar: Drawing, Guessing, Sentence Completion - Group Work In this entertaining past tenses game, students race to guess mixed past tense sentences from drawings. One student from Team A comes up to the board and is given a card. The student reads the first part of the sentence aloud to the class and then draws the second part of the sentence on the board. Team A then has one minute to try to guess the second part of the sentence. The first student to say the second part of the sentence wins and scores a point for their team. Students must guess the exact words on the card to win. If Team A hasn't guessed correctly after one minute, Team B has one chance to guess the answer and steal the point. A student from Team B then comes to the board, and so on. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins. show less

ESL Past Tenses Activity - Grammar, Speaking and Listening: Matching, Categorising, Gap-fill, Binary Choice - Pair Work In this productive past tenses activity, students work with a partner to complete sentences containing various past tense verb forms. In pairs, one student begins by reading sentence halves 1-5 to their partner. Their partner listens, chooses the best sentence half to complete the sentence from their worksheet, and reads it back. If both students agree the sentence is correct, they write it on their worksheets. Students then swap roles and do the same for sentences 6-10. Next, the pairs categorize the sentences from the first exercise into functional groups, according to the past tense verbs used. After that, one student reads gap-fill sentences to their partner, who chooses the pair of verbs from their worksheet that best completes each sentence and says the verbs back using the correct past tense verb forms. The student then completes the sentence with the verbs. Finally, students change roles and repeat the process for the last exercise. show less

ESL Past Tenses Board Game - Grammar and Speaking: Forming Sentences from Prompts, Freer Practice - Pair Work In this enjoyable past tenses board game, students practice forming sentences on a variety of topics using six past tense structures. In groups, students take turns rolling the dice to choose the past tense for the sentence they are going to make. The student then picks up a topic card and makes a sentence about the topic in the tense that corresponds to the number on the dice. For example, if a student rolls a '1' and picks up a 'School' topic card, the student makes a sentence in the past simple connected to school, e.g. 'My favourite subject was English.' If a student rolls a '2', they make a sentence in the past continuous tense, etc. The other students in the group judge whether the sentence is grammatically correct and relevant to the topic. If it is, the student moves the corresponding number of squares shown on the dice. If the student makes a grammar mistake, is off topic or cannot think of a sentence, they do not move along the game board. The first student to reach the finish square wins the game. show less