FHUHS Spanish

The Subjunctive Mode

All of the uncertainty surrounding the Subjunctive Mode is entirely unnecessary. Most of the difficulty presented by the subjunctive has to do with very poor presentation on the part of the textbooks and poor contextualization. Generations of teachers have used textbooks which delay the presentation of the subjunctive until the second or third year. Learners have by that point learned about the present tense, the imperfect tense, the preterite tense, the future tense, the conditional tense, the perfect tenses… And then suddenly the Subjunctive is introduced. It’s only natural for the learner to say to themselves, “Well, here we go with another tense.” At that point the battle is lost. I am hopeful that what follows and the links at the end of this post will help you see how simple the subjunctive actually is.

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