Using Literature to Teach the Subjective Tense

In this week's blog post by Señora Hitz she discusses how she uses the book Bianca Nieves y los 7 toritos to teach her students one of the most difficult grammatical tenses to comprehend; the subjective. The reason why this tense can be particular difficult for an English native speaker is because the manner in which the subjective is used in English is much less complex and similar to the indicative. Meanwhile in romance languages, such as, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish the subjective incorporates the tenses from the indicative (e.i. past, present, future, present progressive, etc.), but changes the way that the verbs are conjugated. Therefore, Señora Hitz uses a story to teach her students this tense. This way they are able to see in what context it is used and how it is properly used. After the students read five chapters she gives them handouts that ask which character said which phrases and all the phrases are in the subjective. Including this method in the classroom helps students fully grasp the idea of the subjective tense.