Free Russian Verb Conjugation Worksheets

How the Russian conjugation worksheet generator works

Start with the verbs. The list holds 600 Russian verbs, ranked by how often they occur in film and TV subtitles, plus everyday verbs a beginner needs that subtitles underrate, such as завтракать, умываться and гладить. Each verb has its English meaning, and you can search the list in Russian or English. Filters narrow it to imperfective or perfective verbs, the first conjugation (читать, читаешь), the second conjugation (говорить, говоришь), the irregular verbs such as хотеть, есть and дать, the verbs of motion, or the reflexive verbs that end in -ся. A live count shows how many verbs match. A worksheet holds up to 30 verbs, in the order you click them. Then tick the tenses you want, and choose the kind of sheet on the preview.

Fill-in boxes, a quick quiz or a verb chart

The fill-in worksheet gives every verb one box for each tense, twelve boxes to a page in four rows of three. Make them smaller to fit fifteen on a page, or bigger for younger learners, with six or four to a page. A present or future box lists all six persons: я, ты, он/она, мы, вы and они. A past box has the four forms the Russian past uses, so it reads я, ты, он читал; я, ты, она читала; оно читало; мы, вы, они читали. The answer key prints on separate pages, so you can hand out the worksheet and keep the key. The quick quiz gives you practice out of order: 10 to 50 shuffled lines, each asking for one form, such as “она · написать · past”. The Shuffle button makes a new version for the next class. The verb chart prints every form filled in, which gives you a printable Russian verb conjugation chart to keep in a binder. To look up a single verb instead, the Russian verb conjugation tables give each of the 600 verbs a page of its own, with its aspect partner, participles and every form.

Aspect: imperfective and perfective verbs

Most Russian verbs come in pairs. The imperfective, such as читать, describes an action in progress, a habit or a repeated action. The perfective, such as прочитать, describes one action seen as finished. They are two verbs with two sets of forms, so the generator treats them as two verbs, and prints the aspect after each meaning: impf. or pf. The difference shows most in the future. An imperfective verb builds it with буду (я буду читать, I will be reading), while a perfective verb has a one-word future that looks like a present (я прочитаю, I will read it). A perfective verb has no present tense at all, so its present box is shaded. Put both verbs of a pair on one sheet, in the present, past and future, and the pattern shows itself.

Stress marks on every form

Russian stress can fall on any syllable and can move as a verb changes, and normal printed Russian never marks it. Learners have to learn it word by word: я могу́ but ты мо́жешь, он жил but она́ жила́. So every form on the answer keys and charts carries its stress mark, the way a textbook prints it. Words with a single vowel get no mark, because there is nothing to choose, and neither does ё, which is always stressed. On the blank boxes, students write the forms without marks, as Russians do.

How accurate are the forms?

The forms come from Wiktionary, and we checked the present or future, the past and the imperative of all 600 verbs against an independent source, the OpenRussian dictionary, stress marks included. Of 7,143 forms compared, 7,045 agreed. The 98 that differed came from 21 verbs, and we checked each one by hand. Most of the time the other source had a typo, a missing or wrong stress mark, or a different verb that is spelled the same, such as засыпать, which means to fall asleep with the stress on the last syllable and to fill up with it on the second. The rest are past forms where two stresses are both correct, such as пре́дал and преда́л, and the sheets print the one dictionaries list first. A few verbs have no imperative that anyone uses, such as мочь, хотеть and видеть, so their imperative lines are shaded, and убедить and победить have no form for я in the future, as the grammars say.

Free worksheets for teachers and classrooms

Every sheet has a name and date line, prints in black and white, and can be photocopied freely. Build one worksheet per unit, or a freshly shuffled quiz per student before a test. Students can also practice on their own with the Russian verb conjugation quiz, which marks each typed form right or wrong at once and has an on-screen Cyrillic keyboard. If you teach another language too, the same generator makes Spanish, German and French verb conjugation worksheets.

Frequently asked questions

Licenses and credits

Conjugation tables come from English Wiktionary through kaikki.org (CC BY-SA 4.0). The verb ranking comes from Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords list, built from OpenSubtitles 2018 (CC BY-SA 4.0).