Download this free B1–B2 grammar worksheet PDF for English learners and teachers. This lesson helps students practise narrative tenses in English, including the past simple, past continuous and past perfect.
Students learn how to use the past simple for finished actions and main events in a story. The worksheet shows how the past simple often moves a story forward, especially when several actions happen in order, such as I arrived, opened the door and switched on the light.
The worksheet also teaches the past continuous for background actions, actions in progress and longer actions interrupted by shorter ones. Students practise examples such as I was walking home when it started to rain, and learn how to describe what was happening around the main events of a story.
Students also practise the past perfect for an earlier past action before another past action. The worksheet explains that the past perfect is useful when students need to show what happened first, as in By the time we arrived, the film had started. It also makes the key point that students should not use the past perfect for every old action, only when the order of past events needs to be clear.
The PDF includes a grammar focus section, narrative tenses exercises, choose-the-correct-form practice, sentence matching, mistake correction, mini-dialogues, sentence rewriting, meaning-and-use practice, speaking questions, writing practice, vocabulary and grammar sentence practice, an error-checking challenge, useful reminders and a full answer key.
This worksheet can be used in one-to-one lessons, group classes, online English lessons, adult ESL lessons, EFL classes, homework or independent grammar practice.
Level: B1–B2
Grammar point: Narrative tenses: past simple, past continuous and past perfect
Focus: grammar accuracy, storytelling, past events, interrupted actions, earlier past actions, speaking and writing
Format: Free grammar worksheet PDF with answer key
This free worksheet includes:
- a clear explanation of past simple, past continuous and past perfect
- practice with past simple for main story events
- practice with past continuous for background actions
- practice with past continuous for interrupted actions
- practice with past perfect for earlier past actions
- practice with while
- practice with by the time
- choose-the-correct-form practice
- sentence-to-reason matching
- mistake correction
- mini-dialogues
- sentence rewriting
- meaning-and-use practice
- speaking practice
- writing practice
- vocabulary and grammar sentence practice
- an error-checking challenge
- useful reminder table
- full answer key for teachers and students
The worksheet focuses especially on common B1–B2 mistakes such as I was see, the restaurant already closed, she meet him, they were watched, had change, he was hearing, the film was start and the bus had leave. The main classroom point is simple: use the past simple for main events, the past continuous for background or interrupted actions, and the past perfect only when one past action happened before another past action.
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