[ola] Re: Subjunctive
- From: Thomas Hinkle <thinkle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:59:14 -0400
I saw WEIRDO and had to bite -- I've always winced at the listy ways of
teaching grammar rules because they seem so clunky to use. How can you
possibly speak and run through an acronym in your head at the same time?
I also am convinced that teaching students which subjects "take" a
grammatical construction is the wrong way to go about things. Instead, I
prefer to use the linguist's tool of minimal pairs. In teaching minimal
pairs, the goal is to find pairs of utterances where the *only* difference
is the thing you're teaching (in this case, the subjunctive), but where the
meaning changes, ideally dramatically -- that way you're teaching what the
grammar *communicates*, rather than what it dictates. Put another way, this
focuses on how you can use grammar to communicate more effectively rather
than on how the rules of grammar, which often feel arbitrary and stupid,
can make you sound like an idiot.
For the subjunctive, the easiest minimal pairs, to my mind, involve
"cuando" and "decir":
Dicen que vengas VS Dicen que vienes
Dijo que vinieras vs. Dijo que viniste
Cuando venga VS Cuando viene
And so on.
I'd introduce the subjunctive in those ways and then let it build out from
there.
Cuando vengas... -> Le dice que vengas --> Quiero que vengas --> Me gusta
que vengas --> Insisto en que vengas is a sequence that makes a kind of
sense without any need for explanation. Note that also natural extensions
of this pattern are the "imperatives" -- "no vengas" and "venga."
There are of course corner cases of subjunctive use, such as the so-called
"emotional" subjunctive, but those uses are actually less consistent among
native speakers as well (for a little mini-example, look at the difference
between equal numbers in a google search for emotional
subjunctive<https://www.google.com/search?q=%22me+alegro+de+que+est%C3%A1s%22&oq=%22me+alegro+de+que+est%C3%A1s%22&aqs=chrome..69i57.6102j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=106&ie=UTF-8#q=%22alegra+de+que+est%C3%A9%22>
/indicative<https://www.google.com/search?q=%22me+alegro+de+que+est%C3%A1s%22&oq=%22me+alegro+de+que+est%C3%A1s%22&aqs=chrome..69i57.6102j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=106&ie=UTF-8#q=%22alegra+de+que+est%C3%A1%22>
vs.
more consistent use of the emotional subjunctive in edited, published
texts<https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=alegro+que+est%C3%A1s%2Calegro+que+est%C3%A9s%2Calegro+de+que+est%C3%A1s%2Calegro+de+que+est%C3%A9s&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=21&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Calegro%20que%20est%C3%A9s%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Calegro%20de%20que%20est%C3%A9s%3B%2Cc0>
).
My source for much of this is a book I never stop recommending, Stanley
Whitley's Spanish/English
contrasts.<http://books.google.com/books/about/Spanish_English_Contrasts.html?id=yyqU_tXek1EC>
Sorry to write for so long, but I always get excited when grammar comes up
:)
Tom
On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Jody Soberon
<JodySo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Included in the word doc are the lyrics to 3 songs, I think all three were
> previously mentioned in another email, including links to video with lyrics.
>
> Hope you find them helpful,
>
> Jody
>
>
>
>
> Foreign Languages
> Brookings Harbor High School
> >>> ALISSA FARIAS <AFARIAS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 4/29/2014 1:03 PM >>>
>
> Looking for some fun activities for teaching the subjunctive. Specifically
> ones that will encourage conversation and also video/audio ones.
>
--
Thomas Hinkle
English & Spanish Department Coordinator
Innovation Academy Charter School
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