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?
