ESL Grammar Games & Activities for Adults – Tenses, Conditionals & More

Looking for ESL grammar games that make grammar practice fun, effective, and memorable? This collection of engaging grammar games and activities is designed for adult learners and helps reinforce grammar structures through repetition and meaningful communication. Whether you’re teaching online or in person, these grammar games provide interactive ways for your students to practise tenses, conditionals, comparatives, the passive voice, and more.

ESL Grammar Games and Activities by Form

Present Simple

Present simple activities including forms of to be, find someone who, adverbs of frequency, and third-person interviews. These activities help students talk about daily life, facts, and general truths in a natural and structured way.

Present Continuous

This section features present continuous activities such as a miming game, describing clothing, describing pictures and videos, and asking about ongoing activities.

Past Simple

Engaging past simple activities to teach the past tense. Help your students learn irregular verbs, question formation and past simple time markers with activities like tic tac toe and a past simple board game.

Past Continuous

Using the past continuous to talk about what was happening at specific times and instructions for the popular Alibi activity.

Present Perfect

Practise talking about life experiences, recent actions, and ongoing time periods. Includes conversation games, time markers, and fluency-based tasks.

Present Perfect Continuous

Activities to practise the present perfect continuous for talking about ongoing actions and differentiating between since and for.

Past Perfect

Activities for practicing the past perfect, including explaining perplexing predicaments.

Future Forms

Activities in this section help students choose between will, going to, and present continuous for future meaning. Includes games for making arrangements, predictions, and imaginative tasks like fortune-telling.

Passive Voice

A selection of activities for practising the passive voice across tenses. These games shift focus from the doer of the action to the action itself, supporting clearer explanations, especially in writing and formal speech.

There is / are & Quantifiers

Practise basic sentence structure and quantity expressions with low-prep games like Kim’s game and What’s in the fridge? Great for beginner and pre-intermediate learners working on vocabulary and structure together.

Conditionals

Use games involving superstitions, Murphy’s Law, regrets, and surveys to help learners practise all types of conditional sentences—from zero to third. These activities offer a balance of grammar focus and creative thinking.

Comparatives and Superlatives

Activities include pair comparisons and adjective dice games.

Reported Speech

Practice reported speech with the crazy questions activity.

Tag Questions

Activities for practising tag questions.

Other Grammar Games & Activities

In this section, you’ll find a variety of flexible ESL grammar games that don’t fit neatly under a single grammar point but are perfect for review, reinforcement, and energizing your lessons. These activities promote repeated use of target forms in fun, low-pressure ways and work well with mixed-ability groups, as warm-ups, or as end-of-class games. From creative deception games to interactive board challenges, these resources help learners activate grammar knowledge through meaningful communication.

Board Games

A range of board games that help students practice various tenses and structures. Also, check out the Online Board Game Creator on LearnHip.com.

Crossword Puzzles

Use crossword puzzles to test your students’ knowledge of verb forms and vocabulary. Half crosswords focus more on fluency.

Four in a Row Game

A printable three-person game where students compete to connect four suitable answers.

Lying Games

Games of deception promote creativity and can be fun and engaging.

Find Someone Who …

Find someone who activities are an excellent way to get students interacting with their classmates, serving as an ideal ice breaker for the first lesson.

Tic Tac Toe

A quick and easy way to review various grammatical structures, including irregular verbs, adverbs, and verbs followed by infinitives or gerunds.

Preposition Constructions

This activity encourages students to use prepositions of position to recreate their classmates’ creations. It’s worth the minimal preparation and gathering of equipment needed.

If you enjoy these grammar games, don’t forget to visit our page of vocabulary games for adults as well.

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Teaching Online

Find online grammar exercises and other activities under the Activity Collections tab at the online-teaching focused LearnHip.com