Title: Why Is It Difficult To Teach English Subjunctive
Abstract: This paper delves into complicated aspects of the English subjunctive mood and accordingly suggest teaching implications. I argue that these complexities arise from such grammatical concepts as mood, conditional, tense, and time. First of all, the subjunctive mood should be defined by the speaker`s attitude toward what he says, not by its structures typically beginning with the subordinator if. These structures are generally dubbed as conditionals ranging from zero to the 3rd conditional according to the verbal form of the condition and the result as well. Finally, the two concepts, tense and time, greatly add to the difficulties of the subjunctive mood. The lack of future tense in English gives rise to a discrepancy between tense and time. The complexity arising from this discrepancy makes the teaching and learning of subjunctive a lot more difficult. It is right here that students need to understand that future time can sometimes be expressed even by past tense in the subjunctive mood in particular.
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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