For the next instalment in my free book series, explained in my recent blog post, for all of November, I’m offering everyone The English Tenses Exercise Book absolutely free.
In case you missed it before, I’m running this series of free books because I’ve had less time to produce new material and the site is getting less visitors anyway, so I wanted to keep giving something back.
Once again, I’ve prepared a introduction to the book and a reflection on its history below, to take a moment to share its story.
The Origins of The English Tenses Exercise Book
The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide was one of my main original ideas for this site, and as a topic I spent a lot of time developing and discussing, it felt only natural that it should have exercises to accompany it. Over the years, I’d managed to produce quite a few accompanying articles on this site, and I wanted to compile them, and more, into a systematic approach to testing the principles of the grammar guide.
One of the big things that encouraged me to do a full book like this was that my most popular article on this site, even now, was a rather basic future tenses exercise.
It took me a long time to get around to creating enough for a book, however, as a large part of the grammar guide’s point was to make more flexible use of the rules. Other than with really specific tense examples, then, and without wider context, I found it hard to come up with exercises where I wasn’t left considering alternative answers might also be appropriate.
Eventually, I devised a series of more regimented exercises which could test understanding of the rules without leaving answers open up to too much interpretation (although this remained a problem with the many different options available for the future tenses!). It was still tricky to come up with variations of these exercises, though, and in the end there was about a six years gap between me releasing the practical grammar guide and this exercise book!
Making the Book Unique
Like my grammar guides, which have my own personal twist on teaching points of flexible grammar, I wanted to make this different to other exercise books, as there are plenty of excellent ones out there. I also didn’t want to make it too complicated though, sticking to mostly gap-fill and matching exercises.
I’m not sure I was fully successful with creating something that original, but I attempted to make it more unique by (a) following a structure that closely accompanied the grammar guide and (b) adding in some more quirky prose-based exercises, with short stories and even a functioning bread recipe!
Otherwise, my aim was to create drills that were simple and engaging enough to provide a flowing set of exercises that would complement similar books. After all, I think you can never have too many exercises when trying to master a language!
The Challenges that Followed
The English Tenses Exercise Book is by far the longest of the books on this site, as I wanted to give a robust offering of different drills. This meant it took longer to make, and made it the most expensive book to produce, both in editing costs and printing costs. As an exercise book, it’s always been primarily popular in print and not eBook, too, making it less profitable overall.
Its release also, unfortunately, came at a time when the effectiveness of my advertising campaigns started to plummet.
As a result of all this, the Exercise Book was not a runaway success, and it took a lot of work to raise visibility and sales for it. The difficulty I had is partly responsible for me not managing to produce another English book since. It did turn a profit before too long, though, and has proved a hearty book that continues to sell about as well as the others on the site, it just never had a boom period like the other three. As of now, it’s sold about a quarter as many copies as the Practical Grammar Guide.
That remains a fairly significant number, still. For an exercise book, in a sea of other exercise books, I’m happy to have reached a few thousand people across the world, which certainly feels like enough to justify its existence! Hopefully it will continue to reach people over time, especially with this month’s free promotion.
Do have a look and let me know if you find it useful!
Get The English Tenses Exercise Book
This popular grammar exercise book is available in eBook and paperback from all major stores, and for the month of November 2025 you can get it absolutely free on my website!
