Spanish Subjunctive and Heritage English Speakers

Question

Are 9th graders too young (cognitively) to be asked to learn the subjunctive well? By "9th graders" I mean American high school students who have had some basic American middle-school Spanish (and maybe elementary, too). Is it too much, too fast?

Welcome to the forum! :) - NikkiLR, Mar 11, 2014

Answer 1

I also am not a native speaker so take this with a grain of salt.

I don't think age is the issue but rather the amount of exposure to the language. By that age they should have a good grasp on their native language due to years and years of speaking it.

Are they ready for advanced (I consider the subjunctive to be advanced) Spanish grammar? Well if they have several years of school Spanish behind them, maybe. If it is their first year of exposure to Spanish, no way.

Personally I am not sure the subjunctive can be "taught". I believe it is more in exposure. Sure there are rules that you can teach but there are almost as many exceptions as there are rules and many native speakers will tell you that they use the subjunctive not based on a set of rules but based on how it "feels".

Estoy de acuerdo amigo. - ian-hill, Mar 11, 2014

Answer 2

Without an understanding of the subjunctive one cannot be considered fluent in Spanish.

In a similar way without an understanding of Modals one cannot be considered fluent in English. Modals are often used in English where the subjunctive is used in Spanish.

So in both cases they must be taught and leant at sometime because without them one is known to be a "foreigner".

Practice follows the instruction to get the "feel" of their usage - as gringo has already said..

:) - gringojrf, Mar 11, 2014

Being known to be a foreigner is not such a bad thing. - gringojrf, Mar 12, 2014

It never bothers me amigo. :) - ian-hill, Mar 12, 2014

I know from experience that any foreigner who even attempts to speak the natives language will receive both respect and admiration. - britisk, Mar 14, 2014

Answer 3

I don't think so. I'm a ninth grader, and I can't learn enough quick enough. As long as you're actually learning the language, retaining the information, and understand what you're learning, I don't think it matters how far you get. Plus, children's brains absorb knowledge better than adults, so if they learn it earlier on, it will be easier for it to stick with them. But I'm still a beginner myself, and I'm not in the public schools, so I don't know how much they learn or how hard that part of Spanish is and I'm not sure how accurate this actually is. Hopefully a native or at least a more experienced speaker will answer this too.