Teaching Simple Present Tense to ESL Students
- Gadi Kovler
- Oct 27
- 3 min read
“Every morning I drink coffee.”
To be honest, it's really just a simple sentence, but many ESL learners still find the concept of putting an -s on he/she/it and figuring out the right usage of do/does to be quite complicated. For ESL students, Present Simple tense is generally the first grammar point they encounter after a short phrase-based language learning session, thus the way you present it has a huge impact on the student's future grammar learning.
Why the Simple Present Tense Trips ESL Students Up
Simple present is a basic one, however it still has several unexpected traps!
Third person singular: Students find "He plays" forgotten whereas "They play" noted.
Auxiliaries in questions/negatives: Do/does is quite new and therefore it makes beginners feel that it is unnecessary.
Overuse of continuous: Some students may say "I am living in New York," whereas what they actually mean is "I live in New York."
It will be a great help for you (and them) if you can recognize these mistakes at the very beginning..
Why ESL Learners Struggle with the Simple Present
Teachers are always thinking that the Simple Present tense is a piece of cake, it’s the time frame from which we state facts and talk about our daily routine. However, studies reveal that it is one of those errors that continue to happen, among English learners, quite significantly, which is particularly true of ESL classrooms.
The “-s” Problem
Ask your students to finish the sentence “He ___ football every Sunday.” Chances are, many will say “He play football.”
A study of Indonesian learners found that 63% of their mistakes in Simple Present sentences were misformation errors — usually forgetting that third person singular ending . If you plotted the data, the “-s problem” would tower above omissions and additions.
This tells us something important: the challenge isn’t about not knowing the rule, it’s about consistently applying it in real time.
Questions and Negatives
Another stumbling block comes with auxiliaries. Beginners often avoid do/does, producing sentences like “She not like pizza”.
One spoken-text study showed over half of errors were subject-verb agreement, but almost a fifth were tied to missing or misused auxiliaries.
It suggests that once students start forming their own questions and negatives, the grammar load suddenly doubles.
Strategies That Actually Work
1. Anchor it in routines Have students write out their daily schedule: “I wake up at 7. I eat breakfast. I go to work.” Suddenly the tense becomes tied to their real life.
2. Play with contrast Put Present Simple side-by-side with Present Continuous. On the board:
I play football every Sunday.
I’m playing football right now. A quick timeline sketch makes the difference visible.
3. Drill with purpose Instead of mechanical gap-fills only, add games: Find someone who always eats breakfast at school → students mingle and ask questions in Present Simple.
4. Use time expressions as hooks Words like always, usually, on Mondays, never give learners confidence. They know that if they see always, they’re safe with Present Simple.
Wrapping Up
Teaching the Simple Present tense to ESL students isn’t about drilling rules; it’s about showing how those rules live in everyday language. Give them routines, contrasts, and a reason to use the form, and you’ll see confidence grow fast.
And if you need a ready-to-go classroom resource, check out our Present Simple Lesson Plan — it’s packed with activities and printable worksheets you can use right away.
