Monday, May 4, 2015

The Stubborn Spanish Subjuntive



The Stubborn Spanish Subjunctive

By Lonnie Dai Zovi

Advanced Spanish teachers have been struggling to effectively teach the Spanish subjunctive to confused students for years.  Some teachers teach it a bit too early.  Some students are not ready to expand their mind that far.  They will quickly erase the progress that they made with the many indicative verb forms.

When I started teaching the subjunctive in my Spanish 3 second semester class (because I thought I had to. My book told me to.) I had students ready to pull their hair out but even worse than that, was that some started to use the subjunctive form for everything. “Ella tenga dos lápices.” and other abominations.

So when should you teach it?